‘I didn’t trick you,’ Tanya said crossly, looking at the fairy’s feet. They were far less ugly now they were clean. The hairy toes even looked rather sweet. ‘The wrinkles will go in a little while. Stop squawking.’
‘Oh.’ Turpin blinked. ‘Then Turpin does like baths.’
‘Good,’ said Tanya, rubbing at her damp hair with a towel. ‘You can have another one tomorrow.’
Turpin looked at the sink in delight. ‘I can?’
‘Well, yes. Most people have them every day.’ Tanya emptied the sink. ‘Now hold still while I comb your hair.’
The fairy obliged, sitting meekly as Tanya teased out the tangles. By the time she had finished, Turpin’s hair was almost dry and now gleamed like honey. Tanya held up a small mirror. ‘Look how pretty you are underneath all that dirt,’ she said.
Turpin snatched the mirror and preened, pleased with herself. ‘Very.’
‘Ratty won’t recognise you,’ said Tanya. She put the comb down and filled the sink again, rinsing out Turpin’s filthy clothes before wringing them out clean. ‘It’s a warm night. These should be almost dry by the morning—’
She stopped abruptly. Turpin was hunched over the mirror, her shoulders shaking. Her wing had escaped from the towel and was twitching pitifully, and a choked sob emerged from behind her hands.
‘What’s wrong?’ Tanya asked in alarm. ‘Did I hurt you?’
‘No,’ Turpin wept. Her voice was muffled. ‘You said that Ratty wouldn’t recognise Turpin . . .’
‘Oh, I didn’t mean it, silly,’ said Tanya. She patted Turpin’s shoulder awkwardly. ‘Not really. I only meant that he’d be surprised, that’s all—’
The fairy lowered her hands and glared at her through red-rimmed eyes. ‘Turpin knows what you meant,’ she said.
‘Ratty will always recognise his Turpin.’ Her face crumpled again. ‘But what if . . . what if Turpin never finds him?’ She buried her face in the towel again and howled.
Tanya watched her in silence, feeling wretched. ‘Don’t cry, Turps,’ she said eventually. ‘You’ll see Ratty again, I’m sure of it.’
‘How can you be sure?’ Turpin said, sniffling.
‘Because I’m going to help you find him.’ The words came out more forcefully than intended, sounding much more confident than she felt.
Turpin looked up at her, eyes lit with hope. ‘But how? We don’t know where he’s been taken!’
‘I know,’ said Tanya. ‘But don’t forget, we’ve been left a clue.’ She picked up the wet clothes and pulled the red envelope out of her pocket. It was now soggy and smudged in places, but still readable. ‘We have Ratty’s letter.’ She skimmed through it again until she came across the part she was looking for. ‘
Go to the place we went to on our first night in this town – the place I could tell a story about. There you’ll find instructions on what to do and where to go next
.’
She placed the letter on top of the dresser to dry out. ‘Now I know that doesn’t exactly take us straight to him, but if his father did manage to leave those instructions before he vanished then maybe we can find them. It might help us to figure out what’s going on and where Ratty might have been taken.’
Turpin nodded slowly.
‘But I’m going to need your help,’ Tanya continued. ‘I know this secret place is the castle dungeon, but it’s going to be tricky to get in. Ratty mentioned something about a passage leading into it from an old well. Do you know it?’
‘Yes.’ Turpin nodded vigorously. ‘Yes, Turpin knows it. She went there with Ratty on the first night in Spinney Wicket.’
‘Good,’ said Tanya. ‘Is it easy to get in without being seen?’
Turpin’s face fell. ‘No. Is in a very busy place near the pier. Lots of people.’
‘So you went when it was dark then?’ Tanya guessed. ‘When everything was closed?’
‘At night, yes,’ said Turpin. ‘When no one was around.’
Tanya nodded. ‘Then that means we’ll have to do the same, you and I. We’ll do it tonight. We’ll sneak out and find the well.’ A chill ran its icy fingers up her spine at the thought of the dangers that lay ahead. She pushed her fears to the back of her mind. Ratty was depending on her, and being afraid wasn’t going to help him. ‘Now dry your eyes,’ she told Turpin. ‘We need to fix your wing.’
13
The Grudge-keeper
T
URPIN WIPED HER EYES AND BLEW HER nose into the towel with a great, trumpeting honk. Tanya politely looked the other way, poking through the toiletry bag. At the bottom she found a travel sewing kit and some antiseptic cream.
‘I could try to sew the torn bits,’ she said. ‘But it’s going to hurt.’
‘No, silly!’ Turpin squeaked. ‘Needles are steel, which has iron in. It will burn.’
‘Oh.’ Tanya’s face fell. ‘Then it’ll have to be the cream. It might sting a little at first.’ She unscrewed the cap and dabbed some on.
Turpin’s eyes watered, but she managed not to squirm too much. ‘What we need,’ she said through gritted teeth, ‘is Spidertwine.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Is a magical thread,’ said Turpin. ‘Made by the fairies. Almost invisible, but unbreakable to humans. Very, very strong and can stitch cuts together to heal perfectly.’
‘And do you have any?’ Tanya asked.
‘No,’ the fairy said gloomily.
‘Then we’ll just have to hope for the best,’ said Tanya. She replaced the lid on the tube of cream and put it back. They left the bathroom and went into the bedroom, where Tanya spread Turpin’s damp clothes on the windowsill to dry. Shortly after, Mrs Fairchild called Tanya to the kitchen.
‘Wait here,’ she told Turpin.
Turpin pouted. ‘Why?’
‘Because I can’t talk to two people at once,’ said Tanya. ‘Not when one is a fairy. It’s too confusing.’ She tugged on some fresh clothes and hung her bathrobe on the chair. ‘We’ll need to find you something to wear, too.’
She went to the kitchen, where a pot of tea and a loaf of apple cake awaited her. Oberon slunk out from under the table, looking sorry for himself. While Tanya had been in the bath, her mother must have hosed him down outside. Though he was clean, there was still a strong whiff of wet dog about him. She smuggled him a small piece of cake, which her mother chose to ignore, then made her excuses and took a second cup of tea and a smaller slice of cake back to the bedroom.
‘Don’t eat too much of that,’ her mother called. ‘I thought it’d be nice for us to eat out this evening – you don’t want to be full of cake.’
‘I won’t,’ Tanya mumbled. She shut the door behind her, then gasped, almost dropping the tea. The china doll was back, sitting boldly on the bed. Only this time it had been stripped down to its frilly undergarments. They had been white once, but were now faded and yellow with age.
‘Ta-dah!’ said Turpin. She stepped out from behind the doll, giving a proud twirl. The green velvet dress flared out, a perfect fit. ‘Turpin found some nice new clothes to wear.’
‘So I see.’ Tanya put the tea and cake on the bedside table and stuffed the doll back under the bed. ‘Somehow, I don’t think Thingy is going to be very happy about it.’ She stiffened as a light scuffle sounded from under the bed. Clearly, Thingy was listening. Even so, she couldn’t help but smirk. There was something comical about seeing Turpin neat as a pin and dressed in dolls’ clothes. ‘Here,’ she said. ‘I brought you some tea and cake.’
Turpin hopped over to the bedside table and thrust her head into the cup, lapping thirstily before breaking off a fistful of cake. ‘Turpin thinks,’ she said, through a crumbly mouthful, ‘that Thingy is not very happy about anything.’
‘It seems happy enough to make trouble,’ Tanya retorted before she could help herself. She waited for a muttered threat from under the floorboards, but heard only silence.
Turpin crammed more cake into her mouth. ‘Many fey creatures like to make mischief. But trouble, nasty trouble, this is different. Not without a good reason.’
‘But that’s just it,’ Tanya protested. ‘There is no reason! It terrorised us from the moment we walked in – we didn’t have time to upset it. It seems to dislike all humans.’
Turpin gave a thoughtful nod. ‘Turpin once knew a fairy like this. Long time ago, before Ratty was born. This fairy –
Nipkin was its name – was the guardian of a little girl. Its name was Delia. Not a very nice little girl, Turpin always thought, but Nipkin was a good and loyal guardian.
‘Of course, all little children must grow up one day. Nipkin knew this as well as anyone, but when Delia became a woman and got married, things changed. Her husband did not see fairies and neither did their children. Very soon, it seemed that Delia did not want to see fairies, either, and wanted to forget all about them. Even Nipkin.’
Turpin took another bite of cake, momentarily distracted as she caught sight of her reflection in the mirror. She smoothed her hair vainly. Tanya poked her.
‘Go on.’
‘It started very slowly. Delia would seem to not hear things that Nipkin said and, when she did, Nipkin did not always get an answer. Its answers became shorter and quieter and, whenever Delia’s husband or children asked who it was talking to, Delia began to say, “Nothing.”
‘Months and years passed like this, and soon Nipkin forgot its name was Nipkin and instead started to think it was called “Nothing”. But Nothing did not want to be a Nothing. It became resenting and ugly. It did things to upset Delia and her family so that Delia would pay attention to it, but of course this only made Delia unhappy and resentful, too. With every unkindness, Delia began to show unkindness, too: dressing in red so she could not be seen by Nothing, and keeping her doors and windows blocked with lines of salt so that Nothing could not follow her.
‘So, Nothing took to living under the floorboards in the dark where it could roam the house freely, coming up only to cause trouble. And every bit of trouble, every grudge, began to weigh on Nothing’s shoulders, even grudges that were not its own, but that came into the house with other people. It kept them all and grew uglier and uglier and meaner and meaner until one day the family went to live somewhere else, leaving Nothing alone with only its grudges for company.’
‘Then what happened?’ Tanya asked.
‘The house became Nothing’s house,’ Turpin said. ‘An unhappy, grudge-keeping house full of arguments and tears. Families came, families left. All with their own grudges. Nothing collected them all, feeding off them. Until one day, when a new family came, a family that was different to many of the others. In this family was a small boy who, like Delia, had the second sight, but whose guardian had died protecting him.
‘The boy knew Nothing was there and he was often blamed for the tricksy things Nothing did. At first, he was angry. The boy often felt alone and sad because of his ability and Nothing was making things worse. But then the boy realised how sad Nothing must be, too, to do the things it did. Now, being a kind and special boy, he decided that the next time Nothing did something naughty, he would not hold a grudge. Instead, he told Nothing, “I forgive you.”
‘Nothing was confused. It had been such a long time since it had experienced forgiveness that it had forgotten all about it. But the same thing happened the next time. The boy forgave it and even left it a small gift of food. And, when the boy shared his forgiveness not only with Nothing, but with his family, too, for blaming him for the things Nothing did, a strange thing happened: Nothing began to let go of the grudges. And the more grudges it let go of, the more it remembered its old self, and soon it no longer wanted to cause misery. Nothing and the boy began to talk, and soon became friends. And, when all the grudges were gone, Nothing became Nipkin once more.’
Turpin paused, brushing cake crumbs from the front of her dress. ‘Turpin thinks Thingy is like Nothing.’
‘You mean a grudge-keeper?’ Tanya asked. ‘That it – I mean, Thingy – was a guardian once, with a proper name?’
The room was very quiet, like everything in it was holding its breath. Thingy was still there, listening, Tanya was sure of it. Could she find it within herself to forgive the trouble it had made? She was still angry, but the tale of Nothing had reduced it from a boil to a simmer. How long had Thingy been lurking in the cottage by itself, growing more and more bitter? She thought of all the people who must have passed through on their holidays, and all the different grudges building up one by one.
She knelt by the side of the bed, lifting the blankets, and peered underneath. The scratching sound had come from somewhere under here.
‘Thingy?’ she said to the dark, empty space. ‘I’m sorry I don’t know your real name, but I know you must have one. Anyway, I wanted to tell you that even though what you did was horrible when you sewed all my clothes up, and sewed me into the bed, I’m going to try to forgive you.’ She paused. ‘If I said it now, it wouldn’t be true and I don’t think either of us would believe it, but in a few days I think I might be able to manage it.’
She reached for the cake on the bedside table and broke off a small piece. ‘In the meantime, I’m going to leave this for you. As a sort of . . . peace offering.’ She leaned under the bed and placed the nugget of cake on one of the floorboards, then got up, allowing the bedclothes to fall back into place. The bed creaked as she sank down on it, then all was quiet. In the silence that followed, there came the faintest of wooden scrapes, like a floorboard being lifted very carefully. A moment passed, then it came again as the floorboard was lowered back into place.
Tanya climbed off the bed once more and peeked beneath it. Save for a few small crumbs, the space where she had left the piece of apple cake was empty.
14
In the Dungeons
‘W
AKE UP!’
Tanya forced her eyes open with difficulty. They were gritty through lack of sleep, for she had not long dropped off. The room was dark, with just a sliver of moonlight cutting through the curtains.
‘What time is it?’ she mumbled.
‘After midnight,’ Turpin replied. She tugged impatiently on Tanya’s hair, so close that her breath hissed across her nose in a soft whisper. ‘Turpin has been trying to wake you for minutes and many more minutes. Time to go, silly girl. Get up!’
Tanya sat up, pushing the warm bedclothes back with great reluctance. Though she had gone to bed early, it had taken her a long time to fall sleep, firstly because her thoughts were alive with the dungeon and what awaited them there, and secondly because Turpin had crawled on to Tanya’s pillow and made some sort of nest in her hair. Tanya’s attempts to extract herself had been unsuccessful; Turpin had simply burrowed closer and even let out a few little snores.