The Faeman Quest

Four

Analogue clothes were really weird. She’d followed the pictures and dressed herself in blue breeches (like a boy!) that clung to her bottom, and a sort of buttonless cotton shirt with writing on the front. The writing said, Beware of Geeks Bearing Gifs. Mella had no idea what that meant – she’d never heard of a geek or a gif – but the girl in the shop had assured her it was cool.

The Analogue World was really weird as well. She was used to the mechanical carriages now; had even ridden in one. She’d listened to the little boxes that talked to you and played music in your ears. She’d sat on a hotel bed watching a window on a scene that kept changing all the time, allowing her to watch humans doing the most remarkable – and sometimes naughty – things. But all these were just magical toys, whatever her father’s journal said about no magic in this realm. What she found seriously weird were the huge trackways of tar and crushed stone that criss-crossed the world like spider-webs. She was on one of them now, walking along its pavement, fascinated by the houses down each side.

They were smaller than the Purple Palace, of course, but they were also smaller than most other buildings in the Faerie Realm, where town houses were seldom less than three storeys and country houses came with their own rolling parklands, gardens and estates. These were country houses (in the sense that they were houses built some distance from the nearest town) but their grounds comprised no more than a few yards of lawn, a few flowers, a few bushes and, rarest of all, the occasional lonely tree. None rose higher than two storeys. Several were just one. Not one was built from honest stone: the favoured material seemed to be rust-coloured bricks. It was incredible to think her father had once lived here.

She came to an open-fronted shelter with a sign on a pole that made her smile. The sign said Bus Stop. At home, ‘to bus’ meant to kiss. But here, of course, it was short for ‘omnibus’, a giant mechanical carriage capable of carrying scores of people along the trackways. She smiled for another reason as well. This was the selfsame bus stop her father had used all those years ago when he came home from school. Which meant his old home must be just a short walk away.

Mella slowed her pace so she could rehearse her story one more time inside her head. She knew from her father’s journal that he was supposed to be living in New Zealand. Mella had no idea where New Zealand was, but she imagined it had to be a long way from here and nowhere near the Faerie Realm. Henry had chosen New Zealand because that was where Mr Fogarty was also supposed to be living. Mella had never met Mr Fogarty, who died before she was born, but she’d spoken to him once or twice and he’d been willing to answer questions. He’d told her the story that they’d fed to Henry’s mother and reinforced with a little subtle spellwork so she would never question it. Basically she believed her son was married to a New Zealand girl and there was no question of them ever visiting England because they were looking after Mr Fogarty, now ninety-nine years old and bedridden. (The dead Mr Fogarty had found that hugely amusing.) More spellwork ensured that Henry’s father believed the same thing. Neither of them were told they became grandparents fifteen years ago. Mr Fogarty had advised Henry that the knowledge of a granddaughter might encourage them to visit New Zealand where the whole elaborate charade would fall apart.

From everything she’d read in the journal, Henry’s father was nice, but weak. When his wife threw him out, he took up with a girl half his age. Now he was living with her in Stoke Poges, somewhere that sounded to Mella like one of the gnomic cities, but couldn’t be because it was in Buckinghamshire, a notorious gnome-free zone. Henry’s mother was something else. Henry’s mother fascinated Mella. She ran a girls’ school somewhere close by. She was hard as iron nails, tough as leather boots. She was intelligent, opinionated, bossy and independent. She even slept with other women, for heaven’s sake. Well, one other woman at least, a girlfriend named Anais.

(Mella had almost missed this when she was reading her father’s private journal for the first time. He referred to his mother, her grandmother, as ‘gay’, which Mella thought meant she was happy and cheerful most of the time. Except from everything Henry wrote, Martha Atherton didn’t seem happy and cheerful. In fact, sometimes she sounded downright sinister. It was quite clear Henry was frightened of her. Later, Mella discovered ‘gay’ had a totally different meaning in the Analogue World.)

But the most exciting thing of all was that Martha Atherton was human. Mella’s father was human, of course, but he’d spent so much of his time in the Realm he was practically a Faerie of the Light. He talked like one and acted like one and much of the time Mella suspected he even thought like one. Her grandmother was different. She’d never even heard of the Faerie Realm. She was human through and through. Mella could hardly wait to find out what sort of woman that made you. She could hardly wait to meet her grandmother.

‘Good morning, Grandmother – my name’s Mella.’

She’d spent much of the last month honing the simple sentence into a state of absolute perfection. Not, You don’t know me, but you may remember you’ve a son called Henry? Well… Not, This may come as something of a shock, but we’re closely related. Not, Hello there, I’ve just come from New Zealand and guess what…? Not even, Hello, Mrs Atherton, I am your granddaughter. If everything Henry wrote about her was true, she would understand at once. It would come as a shock, of course, but she would never show it. She would say, in her stern, serious, terribly human voice, ‘Come in, Culmella, and meet my girlfriend.’ It would be so cool!

What happened after that, what happened after she was invited into the all-girl household, what happened after she met Anais (who Henry said was very pretty) Mella hadn’t quite worked out. But it would all revolve around human customs. She would probably be invited to stay. She might even be taken shopping to buy new clothes (she had gold in her purse, something she’d already discovered went a very long way in this exotic Analogue World). Mella liked to think that what would happen must remain in the lap of the Gods. The Old Gods, that was, who were open to adventures. They were bound to ask her about her father, of course, but since she’d read his journal she knew exactly what to tell them. Her story was well-rehearsed: she’d even read up on New Zealand in case they wanted details about where she lived.

The houses were peculiar in that none of them had the spell-driven guardians that were standard in the Faerie Realm. There, you had only to place one hand on an entrance gate for a voice to whisper the name of the house, the name of the owner, who was currently in residence and whether you would be welcome to call. Most of them had a security setting that paralysed undesirable visitors, then tarred and feathered them if they persisted. But there was nothing like that here, not even a basic announcer. Some of the houses had nameplates, all of them had numbers, but there was no way of telling who lived in them unless you already knew. No way of finding out if you’d be welcome either.

So which house had her father lived in? Which house did her grandmother still live in with Anais? A dreadful thought struck her suddenly: suppose her grandmother no longer lived here? Suppose she’d sold the house and moved on somewhere else? In the Faerie Realm a guardian would give her all that information, including instructions on how to get to the former resident’s new abode. But here…

Mella felt like kicking herself. Why on earth hadn’t she thought of this sooner?

She slowed her pace, examining each house more carefully. She was absolutely certain her father had never mentioned a house number in his journal. Why should he? He knew where he lived and the journal was supposed to be private. (As if anybody expected anything to stay private without spell protection: but then her father was allergic to spells.) Had he ever mentioned a name? Mella wasn’t sure. And if he had mentioned one, she surely could not remember. What to do?

Perhaps she should call at any of the houses at random and simply ask where Mrs Atherton lived. It seemed hideously rude to call on a total stranger demanding help, but what other option did she have? All the same, she hesitated. She simply could not imagine herself walking up to any of those doorways when she didn’t know who occupied the house. What would she do if they called the police? She knew about police from her father’s journal, when he’d written about the time her mother visited the Analogue World. She also knew her rank as Princess of the Realm counted for precisely nothing in this world. If the police arrested her and threw her in a dungeon, she could easily stay there for the rest of her life. She moved on slowly, reading numbers, reading nameplates.

Chatleigh. The nameplate prompted her memory at once. It was engraved on a metal plaque, decorated by a faded painting of some flowers. Chatleigh. Somewhere in his journal, her father had mentioned that name. She was sure of it. And why else would he mention the name if it wasn’t the house where he lived?

She looked beyond the garden gate and saw the house matched the description of his home as given in the journal. (So did several other houses, but she pushed that thought aside.) Mella drew in a deep, shuddering breath. She felt a fluttering in her abdomen. This was it. Even without a guardian, her instinct told her someone was at home, told her firmly that someone had to be her grandmother. It could not possibly be any other way. Mella had come so far, risked so much. The Gods would never be so cruel as to disappoint her now.

She pushed the gate, unconsciously steeling herself for the paralysis of the unwelcome, then remembered and relaxed. It wasn’t like that here. This was a whole new world.

Close-up, the house looked bigger; and a whole lot prettier. There were flowers in the garden and the lawn had just been cut. Her grandmother was clearly a tidy woman. She walked to the front door and waited, heart thumping, to be announced, then remembered again, smiled to herself at herself, reached up and pressed the little lighted button she knew to be a bell-push. She heard the chime as she released the pressure.

For a long, long moment, it seemed as if the house might be empty, despite her intuition. But then she heard the sound of someone moving inside. A woman’s shape appeared briefly behind the frosted glass panel to one side of the door. Then there was the metallic rattle of the funny locks they used here and the door swung back.

‘Good morning, Gra-’ Mella began, then stopped. The woman on the doorstep was absolutely not her grandmother.

The woman on the doorstep was too young. She looked about Mella’s father’s age, or maybe a bit younger; and actually there was the look of Henry about her around the eyes. But if she wasn’t her father’s mother – and clearly she wasn’t – who could she be? There was something about her – an arrogant tilt of the head, a flash of annoyance in the eyes – that told Mella she was certainly no servant.

It had to be asked. Mella screwed up her courage. ‘Does Martha Atherton live here?’ She remembered the Analogue custom and amended, ‘Does Mrs Martha Atherton live here?’

‘Are you one of her students?’

As a princess, Mella was not accustomed to being questioned or explaining herself. ‘No,’ she said coldly and stared the other woman in the eye.

The woman glared back, but eventually said (when Mella refused to look away), ‘She’s on holiday.’ She hesitated, then added, ‘I’m house-sitting.’

It was a strange term, but Mella decided to ignore it. She opened her mouth to ask another question, but what she heard come out was, ‘I’m her granddaughter.’

The woman on the doorstep froze, her mouth half open. She stared at Mella, without the hostility this time but with rather more surprise, even shock. She swallowed, looked away, looked back again, then said, ‘She doesn’t have a granddaughter.’ It was a flat statement without challenge. In fact, the hint of a rising inflection almost turned it into a question.

Mella said very seriously, ‘She doesn’t know she has a granddaughter.’ She straightened her shoulders and pushed a curl of hair back from her face. ‘I’m from New Zealand.’

The woman leaned forward, mouth still half open, to examine her face more closely. After a long, long moment she breathed, half to herself, ‘I don’t believe it. You’re Henry’s child.’

Mella smiled for the first time. ‘My name is Culmella,’ she announced proudly. ‘Who are you?’

‘I’m your aunt Aisling,’ the woman said. ‘Your father’s sister.’