Whirligig - John Broughton

Whirligig - book excerpt

Chapter One

Adam and Emily saw themselves as if from the outside. The girl watched one of her hands take her brother’s and the other point to a dragonfly, circling their heads so that its wings almost touched Adam’s nose. Emily gasped as she saw something impossible: a woman dressed in white sitting on the dragonfly. Tiny and perfectly formed with a golden crown above her long, silver hair, she smiled at the girl. Emily clutched Adam’s hand tightly and wanted to tell him that fairies exist after all and that she’d been right all along, but her words misbehaved. They came from the world of her imagination. Her words were spoken in another tongue: a lovely sound like tinkling Tibetan bells. Adam understood her perfectly; but as he replied, the air vibrated and whirled. It felt as though they would be swept off their feet and into the air while Emily’s grip on his hand became increasingly painful.

The trees behind them blurred green as they spun, and the air became opaque like a steamed-up mirror. Then the mirror cracked across, so the gap created widened while all else spun and whirled around it. But the scene within the crack was firm and well-defined, while the outer, opaque part, swirled like an impenetrable fog. Adam and Emily found themselves inside the gap as if sucked in, but she swore she hadn’t taken a step. There was no sign of the dragonfly; instead, all around them, a chilling mist covered the land, cloaking a wilderness of filthy pools dotted among patches of gorse. Bad gasses mingled with the damp air and Adam held his nose and complained. He asked, “What happened to that weird little woman? Where are we?”

Emily looked around with frightened eyes. This wasn’t what she’d intended to happen when she began her recital. She had no idea and said so in words of a strange, sweet language. Adam stared at his sister, blinked hard and rubbed his eyes. Her long, blonde hair, like her blue eyes, were now shining silver. Above all, she was very pretty indeed; she was still their Emily but like a film star from one of the posters in their den. Of course, he couldn’t see himself, or he would have been amazed. Despite the strangeness of everything around him, Adam had a sense that all was as it should be. He really should be terrified, but he wasn’t. He felt puzzled and curious, but brave as well.

He asked himself what had happened to the middle of June: it seemed like the end of February. For that matter, where were the woods and their den? As for Emily, her toes were numb and she curled them against the cold. She folded her arms across her chest and, her breath wreathing upwards, told Adam to follow her through the gorse. It snagged their jeans and scratched their arms even when they were being careful so that they cried out several times. The barbed bushes seemed to be waiting, watching and then lunging spitefully at them. Soon Emily was limping and crying from the thorns that pierced her bare feet. Luckily, she was just tall enough to see over the spiny bushes to a track.

The track was kinder to her feet; determined, they continued along until it forked in three directions. One way led off through the gorse; another wandered discouragingly downhill through puddles and swamp; the last, broadest and best worn, led uphill. They took the easiest path without a word. Twisting slowly, it gave a view from the top over a wilderness stretching as far as the eye could see. And they saw rough, marshy grassland with stagnant pools, broken by mazes of gorse and tangled briar.

“It’s hateful!” Emily sobbed, “We’re lost and I’m so cold. I’m sorry, Adam, I didn’t mean to. I just wanted to see what the Other World was like.” She shivered and looked so wretched that Adam put an arm around her and told her not to worry.

“Well, you’ve seen it! And it’s horrible! I don’t suppose you could get us back to Our World now, could you? Please?”

Emily gasped; she’d been so keen to visit the Other World that she hadn’t thought about finding out how to get back. She fought back tears, looked crestfallen at her brother, then her expression changed to wonder. She’d been so occupied with the pain in her feet and how cold she felt that she hadn’t really looked at him until now. How he’d changed! He seemed taller and older and more handsome, and his blond hair was silver! His eyes were silver, too! Emily looked down at her long hair falling over her chest and gaped. She grabbed it and felt it. It was silver, but very fine and soft like silk. “Adam,” she said in her strange new language, “what colour are my eyes? Am I …am I …pretty?”

“Silver. You’re not pretty, Em, you’re beautiful like a princess! Have I changed too?” he asked hopefully.

“Well, yes, you’re handsome!” and tears filled her eyes, “but it isn’t us and we don’t belong here, it isn’t Our World,” and her voice broke into a wail, “and—I don’t know how to get us back home again!” Emily buried her face in her hands; her body was wracked with sobs as she thought of home and her mother and father and her cat, Jasmine. “And I’m so cold!”

Again, Adam felt brave, like he could overcome anything or anybody. Definite action was needed, so he plunged down into the briar and gorse and began untangling dead stems. Although the thorns scratched his hands, he ignored the pain and carried an armful back to his sister, who was stamping her feet and wiping her eyes. Adam tossed the thorns down beside her at the top of the hill, where he pulled a matchbox from his pocket with a smile. He was glad he always carried a penknife, magnifying glass, string, ballpoint pen, bottle-opener, and so on—you never knew when they’d be needed. Soon, a flame was crackling and dancing across the thorns, sending a thin plume of smoke skywards. Emily leant forward, holding her hands gratefully near the fire.

“I’ll build it up …” Adam’s words died on his lips.

All about him on the hill were little people. Thin, hungry-looking, ragged people, standing no higher than his waist. They had long, pointed ears and greenish skin. Their tattered green and brown clothing blended so well with their surroundings that they could hardly be seen. In fact, Adam blinked and rubbed his eyes, thinking that it was a trick of the light. But the strangers were still there, fixing him with yellow eyes dull with defeat and fatigue.

“Who are you? Who has dared release the Hag’s spell?” One, with a squint, asked in a fluting voice. These curious beings spoke in the same tinkling language Adam and Emily were using.

Emily moved towards Adam and whispered fearfully, “They’re pixies, aren’t they?”

Brother and sister were shocked when the creature replied, even though these beings were small, they had powerful hearing!

“Ay, we are,” the same pixy said, “but who are you, tall as trolls, but fair as elves? You will not harm us?”

“He heard me!” Emily gasped and, remembering her manners, added: “I’m Emily, and this is my brother, Adam. Of course, we won’t harm you. You see, we are lost—” She stopped because the pixy had taken off his hat and was bowing to them.

“I am Lar, Leader of the Lostlings. At your service.”

“At my service…?”

“Of course, you, who have broken the spell binding us to the Hag.”

“B-but … we haven’t done anything!”

“You have burnt thorns on a fairy hill.”

“Well – er – yes, but—”

Emily looked at Adam and then stared at the eager faces around them. Moments passed, and slowly the look of defeat returned. The pixies murmured among themselves and shook their heads.

“Look at the confusion you have caused,” Lar accused them, his face growing ever more wrinkled as he frowned. “Strange fate, indeed, it is to be led by one ignorant of fairy lore!”

“He’s got a queer way of talking,” Adam whispered to Emily. He was startled to see that Lar had heard his words, judging from the severe squint he received. She ignored her brother and burst out: “I know lots about fairies.” Adam looked at her doubtfully. “I do,” she insisted, “you’re the one who’s never believed in fairies and pixies, and now you’re talking to pixies and I’ve read books about them, so there!”

There was shocked silence at Emily’s outburst. Then Lar said firmly: “Good! Then you must lead us, Emily.”

“Lead you? Lead you where?”

“Out of this accursed land. Away from the clutches of the Hag. You must! You have released her spell, now lead us!”

“But I don’t even know where this land is! I told you, we’re lost—”

These words had a startling effect upon the band of pixies. Heads dropped and shoulders sagged under the weight of misery.

“No, wait!” Adam said. “Who’s this Hag you keep talking about? Tell us everything!”

“Everything? Everything would take many moon-risings,” Lar replied gloomily, “but I’ll tell what I can.”

The pixies immediately sat cross-legged on the ground and Adam and Emily copied them.

“This is the Land of Poverty. It is the land,” he lowered his voice to a whisper, “of the Hag, the Ill-Favoured One, the Wicked Fairy. She is a witch whose will is winter and whose heart is ice.” Lar’s yellow eyes fixed Emily, and he waved an arm around him. “She has created all this. It is a land of suffering, a doomed land.”

“It’s horrible,” Emily nodded and added, “but why are you all here?”

“Her will. Even from afar the Hag’s power is great. Whomsoever her will settles upon is weakened, brought low and finally falls under her spell. Lar pointed to the smallest pixy, a child who was sitting in his mother’s lap and his face became sadder still and more wrinkled. He squinted hard at Adam: “It’s an unhappy bird that’s born in an unlucky nest, is it not so, Master?”

Adam nodded thoughtfully, wondering at being called Master.

“And this land is very unlucky, very bad,” Emily agreed.

“Once under the Hag’s spell,” Lar went on, “forever a Lostling.”

“What does that mean?” Emily asked, brushing her hair out of her face.

As his sister questioned the pixy, Adam studied the curious creature with his squint, who spoke so piteously, yet so wisely, and who had called him Master. The pixy’s next words bothered him even more.

“We are doomed, condemned to a life of misery, to wander these wastes in search of scraps of comfort,” Lar said with bitterness in his voice. He looked hard at Adam again: “He who has food eats and he who has not, bites his nails, is it not so, Master?” It seemed that the pixy had a saying for every situation. Lar continued without waiting for Adam’s reply. “Even so, we are tormented by the Hag’s spriggans—”

“Spriggans?” Adam asked.

Emily seized her chance to impress the pixy company with her knowledge of fairy lore. “Spriggans are wicked creatures,” she informed her brother.

“Ay, wicked,” Lar paused upon the word and repeated it as if the word itself could do harm. “Oh yes, wicked. They torment those who disobey or resist the Hag in any way. They vex anyone who crosses their path,” he sighed, “and as if that’s not enough, we’re at the mercy of the trolls too…”

“Trolls!” Adam and Emily cried out together.

“They’re giants, aren’t they?” Adam gasped.

Lar eyed the boy from head to toe. “Ay, almost as tall as you…” he said gravely, but his words trailed away as his gaze followed those of the other pixies over to the east. There, the sky had lowered into a dark swathe such as Adam and Emily had never seen before. Beneath low clouds, in the distance, a snowstorm flailed towards them. Already the odd snowflake swirled about them, a forerunner of what was about to break.

“What’s happening, Lar?” Emily asked nervously.

The pixies were on their feet now, waiting for orders. Lar, like the others, clutched his hat, to prevent the whistling wind from whipping it away.

“It’s the fury of the Hag, Mistress. The Ill-favoured One has missed us but doesn’t yet know where we are. The snow is Hagspite. It’s full of her wickedness. What is your will, Mistress?”

Twenty pairs of eyes turned, scrutinising Emily’s face. She tried not to show her doubts and fears, after all. She had not asked to be called ‘Mistress’ but, in this matter. she didn’t seem to have any choice. Evidently, these pixies saw her as their only hope, but everything seemed so unreal to her. She thought of home, her garden and her cat, Jasmine, those were real. What on earth was happening to her and Adam? For a moment, she had the strange sensation of being in a film, then it passed.

“Oh, it’s cold,” she said out loud and shivered. She wasn’t dreaming this chill.

She glanced at the track, which by now was only a scar across the cloak of snow among the bushes. Further along, other scars crossed it or branched from it. Emily snapped out of her trance. “There’s no point in staying here,” she shouted above the wind, “though, as I said, I don’t know my way in this land.”

“Nor do we, Mistress,” Lar answered, shivering even more as the snow thickened, “at least, not these parts.” He turned to the others: “Who among you has tramped these by-ways?”

Adam smiled to himself at the pixy’s peculiar way of speaking and looked around the little band. At first, nobody moved, but, at last, one made her hesitant way forward. She made an old-fashioned curtsy in front of Emily.

“This is Lenya from the Land of Halewood,” Lar introduced Lenya, who now spoke in a sing-song voice: “I was this way two moons ago, Mistress, seeking berries; I know,” she lowered her voice, “where this track leads.”

“Where?”

“It leads to the troll’s lair—the troll known as Nabgrasp! I was fortunate to escape with my life!” Even though Lenya had kept her voice low in the wind, pixy hearing is very sharp, so at the troll’s name, groans broke from the snow-shrouded company.

“Nabgrasp?” Emily repeated the name.

“Ay,” Lar nodded. “The Snatcher. The troll who takes what little one has. The Hag only unbinds broken-spirited pixies who agree to obey her every command. She sends them into the wider world to steal for her and to bring her coins, jewels or trinkets of value, which she then flings down a bottomless pit into the earth—”

“That’s stupid, isn’t it?” Adam butted in.

“Because the more she takes out of the world, the poorer it becomes and the happier she is. It is poverty she craves most of all.”

“…And none of you has agreed to obey her,” Adam said. It wasn’t a question, but Lar looked hard at the boy, who by now half-expected some wise saying to follow.

He was right: “Even if the rings have gone, the fingers still remain,” Lar declared in a squeaky voice that was meant to sound noble, “is it not so, Master?”

“Ay,” Adam imitated the pixy.

“But where does this troll Grabnam fit in?” Emily asked quickly.

“Nabgrasp…Nabgrasp!” Lar repeated impatiently. “He steals what little any Hag-ridden pixy might have, should he chance upon him or her. Or if he catches one of us carrying treasure to the Hag, he will take the lot!” Lar’s brow darkened and a look of hatred burned behind his squint. “But any poor pixy who falls empty-handed into his clutches…” Lar didn’t finish the sentence but sighed and, catching Adam’s eye, added: “It rains only on the person who’s already soaked, is it not so, Master?”

“Ay, it is so,” Adam nodded, but Emily nudged him and the grin vanished from his face.

Adam and Emily were full of questions, despite the snow which was piling on their clothing while the wind slashed across their faces.

“Why does the Hag allow the troll to get away with her treasure?” Emily frowned.

“Trolls are far older creatures than fairies and therefore resistant to fairy magic. The Hag is too lazy to rid her land of them. There are four of them; she finds it easier to leave them. Besides, the more Nabgrasp has in his hoard, the less there is in the world outside. Though, I dare say if his hoard grew too great, she’d turn her spite on him…but, Mistress, I beg you,” Lar shivered, “lead us from this place before we all freeze to death.”

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