The Wildkin’s Curse (30 page)

‘I don't want to eat the pelican.' Merry's teeth were chattering so much he could hardly speak. ‘I just want to catch one.'

‘You're mad,' the boy said. ‘Stark staring crazy. You and that pelican lady belong together.'

‘Where is the pelican lady?' Merry cried, grabbing the boy's shirt.

Looking scared, the boy pointed to the headland. ‘She lives in a cave in the headland somewhere. No-one knows where exactly. We used to go hunting for the cave when we were kids, but never found it. Some people . . .' He swallowed and said in a low voice, looking about him, ‘Some people say she's one of the Crafty, and you can only find her if you go looking for her with a true need and a pure heart.'

‘I have a true need,' Merry said, letting the boy go. He dragged his wet clothes on one more time and set off, stumbling in his weariness, his bags banging on his back. The boy stared after him, pushed his hat to the back of his head, and said, ‘Jumping Jimjinny, what a crazy loon!'

Merry's legs were trembling by the time he reached the steep jumble of rocks at the base of the headland, a stitch sharp in his side. The sun dazzling on the water made him dizzy, and whenever he glanced up in fear at the headland looming above him, vertigo swam over him and he staggered and almost fell.

The worse pain, though, was the agony in his heart. ‘Lili, Lili,' he murmured and wondered where she had gone. Would she be pleased when he came back with the pelican feather? Would she forgive him for being what he could not help, one of the Ziv and so her enemy?

Please,
he thought,
I have true need . . .

A squawk sounded above his head. Groaning, Merry looked up, and saw a big black and white bird perched above him, regarding him with a grave, dark eye. Its beak was as long as a sword. Merry climbed closer tentatively, all too aware of the length and strength of that powerful beak. His heart tolled like a cracked bell in the cage of his chest.

When he was almost close enough to reach out a hand and try to pluck a feather, the pelican suddenly squawked again, spread its wings and flew up to another rock. Wings settling back into its body, it regarded Merry with a direct and challenging stare, as if waiting for him. Merry clambered slowly and painfully after it, grazing his hands and knees on the steep and slippery rock.

On and on he climbed, while the sun rose higher in the sky and the sea below him dwindled till it looked like nothing more than a stretch of wrinkled blue silk, stitched here and there with sequins. His grazed hands were bleeding and his vision swum, but still he clambered on, following the pelican which led him on with short bursts of flights, up ledges and narrow cracks, until at last Merry crawled out onto a broad ledge, almost a thousand feet above the sea. A narrow, dark crack split the rock before him.

He lay winded, his pulse thudding dully in his ears, then managed to crawl forward, through the crack in the rock and into a wide cave. He saw, briefly, an old woman rising swiftly to her feet, surprise on her face, then darkness engulfed him. He fell down a deep, deep hole, the old woman's face spinning away into a tiny bright circle of light that was abruptly snuffed out.

Liliana walked swiftly through the forest, clambering over mossy logs and slippery boulders, pushing aside dangling vines, smashing away branches with a stick. Her eyes were burning, her fists clenched. She was in a tumult of emotion, rage and misery churning and roiling within her so that she did not know whether to cry or shout or scream. She felt betrayed, bitterly betrayed, and castigated herself for being so stupid as to let herself fall in love.

Your job was to rescue Rozalina,
she told herself.
Your only job! You should have known better. Love is for songs and stories, not for real life. Love makes you weak and stupid and vulnerable. What were you thinking?

Liliana reached a steep cliff and turned to follow it along, not knowing where she was going, only needing to stride out, putting as much distance between her and the palace as possible.
I'll never go back
, she thought to herself.
I'll keep on walking forever!

More than an hour passed, and she was beginning to walk more slowly, bashing aside branches and vines with less vehemence than before. The cliff curved round and the ground began to climb. She followed it up, and found herself on the second, lower headland, with its breakwater stretching across the mouth of the harbour. She walked along the breakwater, occasionally throwing rocks at the waves which roared and crashed on the far side. Their fuming, frothy turbulence enthralled her. At times spray lashed her across the face and she tasted salt on her lips.

Within the harbour, ships rocked at their moorings. Hundreds of pelicans were soaring above the water. They wheeled and glided, jubilating in the rising thermals, their long necks stretched out, their wings beating in perfect unison. More floated together on the water, preening each other and stretching out their wings in a courtly dance. As Liliana watched, a squadron of pelicans took flight, as if racing one another into the sky.

Tears rushed to her eyes. She envied the pelicans their joyous freedom, their sense of belonging. She had always been alone, and it seemed alone was how she would remain.

Liliana watched the pelicans for a long time, hoping one would land and come close enough for her to pluck a feather. It seemed an impossible wish. They were too far away.

She turned and gazed back at the palace. It looked too ethereal to be true, floating in a blue haze above the ocean. She had hated every moment within its high, glass walls.

What must it have been like for Rozalina, a wildkin queen trapped there for sixteen long years
, she told herself sternly.
Come on, Lili! You came here for a reason. Go find those boys, make them help you pluck the very last feather, and do what you came here to do.

She turned and marched back towards the palace.

Merry came slowly to his senses. Every part of his body hurt. His head and chest ached, his breath rasped, his limbs were heavy.

Someone was kneeling beside him, pumping his chest with hard, regular strokes. He coughed, and tried to sit up. His head swam.

‘Welcome back,' a cracked voice said. ‘Lie still, don't try and move yet.'

Merry lay still, feeling very strange, as if he floated above his body like a dandelion seed. The wrinkled face of a very old woman looked down at him, dark intelligent eyes set among countless creases and folds. Her white hair was worn pulled back from her head into a long, tight plait, and she wore a black shawl about her thin, stooped shoulders.

‘Your heart stopped beating for a minute or two there. If you had not fallen at my very feet, I fear you would have died.'

‘The second death,' Merry murmured.

‘It was your heart giving out. Horace was very concerned.'

‘Horace?' Merry asked dazedly.

‘My pelican. Come, can you sit? Lean on me, I'll help you up and then I'll get you something to drink.'

Merry managed to get to his feet and, leaning heavily on the old woman, stumbled across to a chair made of drift wood and softened with a cushion made of sailcloth stuffed with feathers. He sat down abruptly, his legs giving way beneath him, and looked around.

He was in a broad, high cave. A black and white curtain of feathery pelican skins was tied back above the doorway, and more feathery skins covered the rocky floor. Bowls and cups made of wood and bone were piled on a shelf above a round fireplace, along with bundles of twigs and dried flowers, pelican feathers and driftwood, and rows of green bottles. The wall behind the fireplace was stained black with smoke. Drawings of surprising delicacy and vigour were sketched all over the walls in charcoal—pelicans and seagulls and albatrosses flying, dancing, fighting, feeding their young.

A stone altar was set under the largest drawing, which depicted a pelican on a nest of untidy twigs, her young gathered about her, beaks gaping wide. The pelican had pierced her own breast with her bill, so that drops of blood flowed down to feed her young. On the stone altar were one black candle and one white candle, in carved wooden candlesticks. Vaguely Merry remembered something the Erlrune had taught him about the spring equinox being the day when light and darkness were in equal balance, joy and sorrow, good and evil, mystery and knowledge, all the great dualities of nature.

The old woman dipped a wooden cup in a barrel of rainwater and brought it to him. When he drank, the water was cold and clear.

‘You're as white as a sheet. Let me make you a potion.'

Merry sat quietly in the driftwood chair, watching the old woman as she mixed together several liquids from small green bottles. She was gaunt and stooped, with white papery skin and one shoulder hunched higher than the other. Her hands, he noticed, were crooked and knobby, the fingers deeply grooved with scars just above the knuckles.

In a moment, she came back with a wooden cup of some bitter-smelling liquid. ‘Drink this,' she said with authority, and Merry obeyed, making a face at the taste.

‘All of it,' she instructed, and he drank it to the dregs.

After a moment his heartbeat steadied and his limbs stopped trembling. She stared at him consideringly, then suddenly laid her gnarled hand on his chest.

‘Has your heart ever failed you before?'

He shook his head slowly, then gave a little shrug.

‘Do you often get this pain in your chest?'

Merry gave a bitter smile. ‘Never as bad as today.'
Because today my heart is broken
, he thought.

‘You're pale and sweating, and the skin under your eyes is blue,' she said thoughtfully. ‘Your heart beats too fast for a boy your age. Do you ever have trouble catching your breath?'

‘Sometimes,' he said reluctantly.

‘Were you sick as a child?'

He shrugged and nodded. She felt his heart with her scarred fingers, then nodded her head and went back to her shelf. ‘I'll give you a bottle of my potion. I want you to drink a teaspoon every morning and every night. When it is finished, come back and I'll make you some more.'

‘What's in it?' Merry asked.

‘It's made from boiling lily of the valley and hawthorn blossoms in water,' she said. ‘I have added some tincture of foxglove leaves to it, for extra power. It'll strengthen your heart and make it beat more smoothly. In the meantime, be careful of overexerting yourself. You do not want your heart to fail you again.'

He leant his head miserably against the chair. ‘Thank you . . . I'm sorry, I don't know your name.'

‘I'm called Palila of the Birds.'

Merry nodded, vaguely recognising the name. He looked at her more closely, thinking he had seen her somewhere before. Then it came to him. ‘I know you! You . . . you're Princess Rozalina's warden!'

The old woman nodded. ‘I am indeed.'

‘You held the chain that bound her.'

‘Yes.'

‘But . . . but . . . what are you doing
here
?'

‘I live here. I have always lived here. I do not like the palace. If it was not for Princess Rozalina, I would never go there.'

He shook his head, bewildered.

‘Did you think I lived with her always? I used to when she was a baby, but I could not bear being always locked up and confined, and she knew I missed the sea and my birds. I always did much to help the hearthkin in the city too, and I know they missed my healing arts. So Princess Rozalina said I was only to come during the daylight hours, when she is awake and needing company. I go out at dawn and dusk to gather herbs and to tend the sick, and then I go on up to the palace and break my fast with her.'

‘It's a long way,' Merry said, thinking of the dreadful climb back down that precipitous cliff-face to the seashore, and the hard scramble over the rocks to the harbour, and then the long way through the city and the forest and the steep road zigzagging its way up to the palace, which could not be so very far above their heads now.