Lily and the Prisoner of Magic Page 2

  ‘I don’t feel that much different,’ she said, sounding sorry. ‘Less, um, misty. But I don’t think I could do a spell. I never did think I could.’

  Henrietta padded over to her and rubbed her soft, wrinkly face against Mary’s bare leg. ‘I don’t think you’ve got any magic in you,’ she told Mary regretfully. ‘Do you mind very much?’

  Mary swallowed in a gulp, and sat down on the twig-scattered earth next to the dog. ‘Not all that much… But what do I do now?’

  Lily crouched next to her. ‘None of us knows what we’re going to do. The dragon says he’ll carry us to the theatre, but after that – we don’t know. But it’s better to be anywhere else than at Fell Hall, isn’t it?’

  ‘You won’t leave me behind because I can’t do it?’ Mary whispered.

  The dragon snorted furiously, and Mary shrank back against Lily, trembling.

  ‘I didn’t mean to frighten you, dear one. I am angry, but not with you.’ His tail thrashed from side to side among the trees, shaking leaves down on their heads. ‘How has everything gone so wrong, since we slept?’ He lowered his massive head towards Lily and Mary. ‘You will never be left behind.’ Then he drew himself up, curling his forelegs protectively around Princess Jane and nudging Peter, who was huddled on his back still. ‘Those of you who feel you do not have the magic in you, come and sit with me.’ The growl had softened back to a velvety purr. ‘We shall watch. Delicious magic; it will be a treat.’

  About fifteen of the children hurriedly separated themselves from the rest, mostly looking relieved. The dragon purred at them in welcome, wrapping his tail around his forelegs like a bench, and murmuring, ‘Sit, dear ones. Sit.’

  ‘Are we going to make a spell now? A proper spell?’ Lottie asked eagerly, dancing up and down and pulling on Lily’s arm. ‘Please tell me how!’

  ‘I don’t really know how,’ Lily said, glancing anxiously at Georgie and Henrietta. ‘It just happens. Um. I suppose if we’re doing a spell together, we all ought to think about the same things.’

  ‘Hold hands,’ Henrietta pointed out, scurrying busily around between their feet.

  ‘Oh! Yes.’ Lily caught Lottie’s fat little hand, and held out her other hand to one of the boys, who took it rather gingerly. The boys and girls had been separated at Fell Hall, and he probably hadn’t held a girl’s hand in years. His hand was dry, and hot, and it was shaking.

  ‘We need to hide ourselves,’ Lily murmured, looking around at the nervous, excited faces. They were all gathered in a circle now, with Henrietta still weaving herself in and out as though she were playing some strange party game. Lily could feel more than just Lottie eagerly squeezing her fingers, and the shy boy’s tentative grasp. Magic was humming round the circle already. Years of pent-up power were sparking from fingertip to fingertip, and the boy holding her hand gasped excitedly as a sheen of silver washed itself over his arms.

  ‘What’s happening?’ he whispered to her. ‘I didn’t do anything; I thought we’d have to say some words.’

  ‘Sometimes you do,’ Lily whispered back. ‘But sometimes things happen without you really knowing why.’ Henrietta nudged her leg, and peered up at her smugly. The glistening magic was coating her dark fur too.

  ‘Think about hiding,’ Lily said, raising her voice to speak to all of them.

  All around the circle, children were gripping hands more tightly, half frightened, half gleeful, as their magic shone and sparkled among them. Lily saw that Lottie’s gingery curls were glittering, as magic shone along every strand of hair. Elizabeth, her sister, squeaked as her own red hair unbound itself from its tight plait, twisting and swirling and growing almost to her toes.

  ‘Hiding,’ Lily said again, almost hating to call everyone back from this first joy of magic rushing through them. ‘We have to be safe. Think of a wall that closes us in.’

  ‘No!’ the boy next to her hissed, almost pulling his hand away. ‘Not after Fell Hall! No more walls.’

  Lily nodded. ‘A hedge then!’ Magical stories had grown unpopular since the queen had banished magicians, but she’d had an ancient book of fairytales at home in Merrythought House. She remembered a rose hedge, thorny and impenetrable. ‘We’ll make the trees seem thicker, and darker, and if people come past, they’ll want to go round the wood, instead of through it.’ She closed her eyes, thinking of vines and ivy and roses trailing in between the outer trees as a flowery barrier.

  ‘Look…’ Georgie whispered, and Lily’s eyes flickered open again.

  Elizabeth’s red hair was twined with vines and tiny white wild roses, their thorny stems winding in and out. Her always worried, greenish eyes were sparkling now, and her grey-pale cheeks were pink. And beyond the trees a shadowy fence of flowers and leaves had grown up, not quite there…but Lily was fairly certain that anyone who tried to walk through it would find it was very real indeed.

  ‘Oh…that was so exciting…’ Elizabeth breathed, as the others broke out of the spell and stared at her.

  ‘You’ve got a proper dress on,’ one of the girls said admiringly. ‘Look, she was in her nightgown before!’

  It was true that Elizabeth was now wearing a long, trailing white dress, with sprays of silken flowers embroidered up and down the skirt.

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ Georgie murmured, stroking it. ‘Look at the stitching! That spell must have seen it inside you somehow. I’d never thought of doing embroidery by magic.’

  Lily rolled her eyes at Henrietta. Georgie loved clothes, and would have liked nothing better than to work in the wardrobe at the theatre they’d lived in, making costumes for the ballet dancers. Lily couldn’t think why anyone would sew for pleasure, and Georgie seethed about her little sister’s torn, stained dresses. Magical embroidery didn’t sound much more exciting than the normal kind to Lily.

  Elizabeth and Georgie settled down by the princess, admiring the delicacy of the dress, and the others sat in groups, stretching out their fingers and trying to recapture that strange silver glow.

  ‘That was lovely,’ Lottie told Lily, yawning hugely, as they leaned against the dragon’s warm scales. ‘Can we do it again?’ She was almost asleep.

  ‘Later,’ Lily promised. ‘We ought to rest now – we have to fly again tonight.’ But Lottie was asleep already.

  It was half-dark by the time Lily woke, her arms prickly and aching from holding Lottie. Georgie was leaning against her, and Henrietta was curled up on her feet. Lily had a sudden, panicked moment, sure that she had lost someone, but still too wrapped up in her uncomfortable daytime sleep to work out who.

  Then she saw that Peter was sitting up, his legs stretched out in front of him, against the dragon’s neck. He still looked dazed but his eyes were open, wide open, and he was gazing at her, as though at last he had remembered who she was.

  She smiled at him, hopefully, and he smiled slowly back, as though he was having to try hard to remember how to do it.

  Lottie woke up, frowning, and patted Lily’s hand. It was only a gentle little movement, but it was insistent, and as Lily turned back to look at the small girl, she realised that Lottie thought of her as the person in charge. The person who was going to make everything right.

  ‘I’m hungry,’ she told Lily, her voice wavering a little.

  Lily nodded. ‘I know. I am too, Lottie. But we don’t have anything. It’s hard to make food with magic – magic and nothing else, I mean. You need ingredients to start with.’ She looked over at the dragon, who was stirring slowly, his wings rustling as he woke. ‘We’re going to fly to London,’ she explained to Lottie. ‘There’ll be food at the theatre – or, at least, there’s lots of places we can go and get some.’

  Lottie wrinkled her nose, and seemed to be thinking about complaining. But even though she was only six, she could see quite well that there wasn’t any food to whinge for.

  The dragon yawned, and almost everybody huddling around him in the wood flinched. His teeth were very large and shiny when one had a close-up view of
them like that. He closed his jaws with a satisfied snap, and gazed down at Lily. ‘Shall we fly on?’

  Lily nodded, and looked around for the other dragons, blinking as she tried to see them stretched out among the trees.

  ‘They’ve gone,’ the silver dragon told her with a smoky sigh.

  Lily swallowed, imagining the playful troupe of dragons loose in the countryside. ‘Where?’

  He shook his wings a little, his eyes glittering in the dusk. ‘I don’t know where they’ll go. But they will be careful. I explained. They found it very hard to understand that magic is no longer welcome, but they will stay hidden.’

  ‘They won’t hunt people, will they?’ Lily whispered to him, rather anxiously.

  The dragon rustled his wings again, and answered in a low, murmuring growl. ‘I hope not. But then, they are wild…’ He nudged her very delicately with the side of his huge face. The scales were surprisingly silky. ‘They might eat people. But only people they don’t like.’

  Lily wasn’t entirely sure if he was serious. Did dragons tease? She was sure she’d read about them loving riddles, but that was all.

  ‘You need to take off the spell,’ he murmured to her, and she nodded. She’d almost forgotten. The little grove would have been abandoned for ever.

  ‘I think the red-haired one needs to do it,’ Henrietta said, nodding towards Elizabeth, who was smoothing the skirts of her new dress with a pleased expression. She looked up anxiously as she heard Henrietta.

  ‘How do I?’ Then her face fell a little. ‘Do you think I’ll have to give the dress back?’ she asked sadly.

  Lily nibbled her bottom lip. ‘No… Why don’t you try pulling out a hair? The spell made your hair grow, and you’ve still got flowers in it.’

  Wincing a little, Elizabeth did as she was told, plucking one long, golden-red hair that twisted around her fingers as though it was still alive. ‘Now what should I do?’ she asked, gazing at it, and Lily thought furiously. She’d hoped that just pulling out the hair would do something to the spell, at least.

  The dragon spat out a little flicker of flame, and the children gathered in between his forelegs scattered with yelps.

  ‘Apologies,’ he murmured. ‘I forgot myself… Hold it here, young lady in the dress.’

  Elizabeth held the hair out to him at arm’s length, worriedly eyeing his fiery mouth. The hair curled and coiled, and the dragon shot out one tiny flame that frizzled it to a twisted rope of ash which collapsed and blew away on the wind.

  All at once the wood seemed lighter, the faint shadowy hedge around the trees melted away, and Lily could hear voices in the distance.

  ‘We should go. It’s dark enough, isn’t it, if we keep high?’

  The dragon nodded, and the children began to climb on again, settling themselves along the ridges of his spine. With his wings pressed close to his sides, he wormed his way between the trees to the open field beyond.

  Lily felt Princess Jane’s thin arms tightening around her waist as the wings stretched and beat, and they were up, in a rush of cold air and sharp-smelling magic.

  ‘Look at the lights…’ Lily murmured, as they circled slowly above the city. ‘Don’t forget to hold on,’ she added sharply, listening to the gasps and sighs of admiration from behind her. All the children were leaning over the dragon’s sides, peering down at the sparkling ribbons of light that tracked the streets of London.

  ‘This city is a great deal larger than it used to be,’ the dragon said thoughtfully. ‘I suppose it’s only to be expected.’ But he sounded sad again, as though he was realising how much time he’d lost.

  Lily ran a comforting hand over the back of his head – where his ears would be, except that she wasn’t sure which of the scaly fronds actually were his ears. But he seemed pleased. She could feel his purring growl beneath her.

  ‘Lily, how do we find the theatre from up here?’ Georgie asked. Lily could hear that she was frowning.

  ‘We can’t. We’ll have to go lower, so we can see the streets properly. It’s close to the river, we know that…’ But the river looked awfully long, even from up here. It wound through the city like a glistening snake.

  ‘What if someone sees us?’ one of the boys called, and Lily sighed.

  ‘We haven’t a choice. And I don’t think anyone who saw us would believe what they were seeing anyway,’ she added. ‘No one thinks dragons exist any more, or that they ever did. Everyone knows they’re only a story. If you saw a story flying over your house, you’d probably just go and hide your head under your pillow. I hope.’

  The dragon chuckled. ‘I think it would be a good thing if we were seen, Lily. We need to bring the magic back. What better way to start?’

  Lily shivered. ‘Not yet. We aren’t ready.’

  The dragon was silent for a moment. There wasn’t even the slap of his wings against the wind, now that he was gliding down towards the glittering streets. ‘Will you ever be ready?’ he asked her at last.

  Lily stared at the lights blurring and flashing beneath them and sighed. ‘Maybe not. That’s what you mean, isn’t it? That we couldn’t be ready for something like this. So we shouldn’t worry if we aren’t?’

  ‘Indeed. I do not suggest that we are reckless. But you should be daring.’

  ‘I don’t feel daring,’ Lily whispered, the words whipping away in the wind. ‘I wish we could just stop, and have a rest for a while.’ That was why she wanted so much to go back to the theatre, she realised. For a few short weeks, she and Georgie and Henrietta had lived there as though they might have stayed for ever. As though they weren’t running away from their mother and her strange plots. And as though all they knew of magic were the illusions they assisted with on stage.

  Then the dragon shivered underneath her with one of those strange purring growls, and Henrietta darted her head down to lick Lily’s arm, and Lily shook herself. She was flying over London on the back of a dragon. Until a few weeks before, she’d thought that her family’s magical blood had missed her out, and she’d never imagined anything as amazing as this.

  She wondered how many magicians there were, hidden away around the country, burying their magic deep inside themselves. They’d never know what it was like to fly on a dragon, or even join hands and surround themselves with magic as she and the others had done, back in the wood.

  ‘Perhaps just a little bit daring,’ she said to the dragon. ‘We don’t want the Queen’s Men searching for us.’

  He nodded. ‘I think those that have magic inside them may be looking, Lily. I can feel them, wishing, as I fly…’

  ‘There must be hundreds.’ Lily caught her breath excitedly as he swooped down lower, gliding past the attic windows of the tall houses, and arcing out over the river. She could hear Georgie and Lottie behind her, Lottie squealing delightedly as they skimmed across the water, and Georgie telling her not to wriggle so much.

  ‘The theatre isn’t far from that bridge, Lily!’ Georgie yelled. ‘We walked across it once, remember? Tell him to turn in line with the bridge, and fly south. I think, anyway…’

  ‘I heard her,’ the dragon told Lily, banking to the right and dipping over the ornate metal bridge. He must have looked like some strange cloud, or a wisp of mist off the river. Only a pair of horses drawing a delivery van spooked at the sight of him, rearing and twisting against the shafts of the wagon. Lily could hear their driver cursing.

  ‘So horses don’t like dragons, then?’ she asked him, and he snorted.

  ‘Nothing on four legs likes us, dear one. They know we’d happily eat them.’ He chuckled. ‘Your little dog pretends that she understands no such thing, but she’s not very convincing. Ah, is this it? All lit up? I can hear music.’

  ‘Yes!’ Lily shrieked delightedly, ignoring the furious muttering from Henrietta. ‘Do you think you could land in that yard at the back? Is it big enough?’

  The dragon circled lower, and eyed the yard thoughtfully. ‘If I land there, Lily, it will be difficult for me
to take off again. I could do it, but it would be slow; I’d have to claw my way up. Are you sure we’re safe here?’

  Lily gulped, and turned back to Georgie, who nodded. ‘It’s the safest place there is.’ She had her fingers crossed behind Lottie’s back, Lily could tell.

  ‘Not that that means much,’ Henrietta muttered crossly.

  ‘Land,’ Lily told him. ‘If – if something goes wrong –’ she didn’t want to think what – ‘then we’ll make some sort of spell. We won’t let anyone hurt you.’

  He snorted kindly. ‘I am more worried that someone will injure you fragile little things. Dragons are hard to hurt.’

  The little yard at the back of the theatre led onto the scene dock, where the huge canvas flats were painted. A gate led out of the yard into the rabbit warren of alleys that crisscrossed the grander streets around the theatre.

  The dragon settled into a tighter spiral, corkscrewing down towards the cobbles, and eventually slipped into the tiny yard with a rustle of enormous wings. There was very little space left.

  ‘And now we wait?’ he asked. ‘I can hear music still. Is there a play, now?’ His eyes were glinting eagerly, and Lily rubbed soothing fingers across his scales.

  ‘A show, yes, it must be nearly the end.’

  ‘That’s Daniel’s music,’ Georgie said quietly, smiling a little. ‘I can tell. It’s the floating girl trick. He’s found someone to replace us, Lily.’

  ‘Well, that’s good, isn’t it…’ Lily tried to sound as though she didn’t mind – they’d left the theatre, after all. It must have been about ten days ago, she thought, trying to count back in her head. ‘We told him to. We went off with Aunt Clara, remember. To see if she could tell us where Father was.’

  Their mother’s sister had been in the audience, and she had searched the girls out the next day. Lady Clara Fishe had hidden her magic so well, and for so long, that even she didn’t realise she was still using glamours to keep up appearances as a society lady. She had been horrified that Lily and Georgie might let the family’s dirty little secret out, and put her son, the girls’ cousin Louis, in danger. When they’d been denounced as magicians, she had hurriedly washed her hands of them, and seen them sent away to Fell Hall.