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  Sing to Me

  An Aekhartain

  Romance

  Becca Lusher

  All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © Becca Lusher 2014

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.

  This ebook may not be re-sold.

  Table of Contents

  Introduction to the Aekhartain

  Sing to Me

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Epilogue

  Extras

  Glossary

  Drabbles

  Orion’s Kiss Excerpt

  Unbound and Free Preview

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  ~ ~ ~

  For everyone out there who falls in love, in whatever strange and wonderful ways you can.

  And for those whose love doesn’t fit in with commonplace expectations or traditions.

  May the happiness you find be yours to keep.

  Heart’s luck to you all.

  ~ ~ ~

  An Introduction

  to the Aekhartain

  This story is about the Aekhartain, a group of humans made immortal by various accidents or quirks of fate. Some were born in the right (or wrong) places, others simply inherited it in their blood. All of them face their challenges, when the immortal part of them, that essence inside that makes them so different, stirs, wakes and makes itself known to the world. But those are different stories for different days.

  All you need to know for this tale is that it takes place in the Shadow Garden. A place on the edge of the universal abyss, where an Entity has laid down her vast power to provide a home for the Aekhartain, this strange group of people she never meant to make immortal.

  Part of that immortality is shown in the wings upon their backs, which can come and go as each Aekhartain decides. But they’re not angels. They’re just people, gifted, strange and marvellous people, whose lives have extended into infinity. And like many people, sometimes they fall in love.

  That is where this story begins.

  Sing to

  Me

  One

  DÓMA WHISTLED AS she walked, feeling light and buoyant in the glistening twilight. The Shadow Garden was all dark blues and dusky shadows today, while overhead the stars burned wonderfully bright. It was a beautiful place to live. Dóma couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t loved it here. Some people found the constant shadow-light difficult to adjust to at first, but to Dóma it had always felt like home.

  She knew the newest resident of the Garden didn’t feel that way yet. Freyda wasn’t used to living in comfort, with friends all around her. Dóma wanted to change that, to make Freyda feel like she belonged, in big ways and small. That was why she was walking through the Garden with a little box of ideas in her arms. Well, she had to start somewhere.

  As she made her way through the trees, a song thrush kept pace amongst the branches, its melodious song blending seamlessly with her whistling. It was a good day to be out, and Dóma smiled cheerfully down at the box she carried. It was a good plan; she hoped it worked. She so wanted it to work. For herself, for the Garden, and most of all for Freyda.

  She’d seen other people come and go in the Garden, of course, during her century amongst Maskai’s trees, but there was something different about Freyda. Something special.

  Dóma wanted to make everything right for her, make her smile, make her happy. She’d been friendly to other new residents before, but there was something about Freyda that made her want to do more than make friends.

  Mine, a tiny voice inside her heart whispered, but Dóma ignored it.

  Freyda was so lonely. Oh, she had her work with Maskai, which no other Aekhartain had ever had before, and everyone was eager to make friends with her. Yet something was missing. It didn’t help that Freyda kept running back to the world whenever no one was looking.

  Dóma frowned about that. Surely after the way Freyda had been treated there was nothing in the world worth returning for.

  “I guess we’ll have to give her a better reason to stay here instead, eh, Sym?”

  The song thrush gave a low two-toned whistle, but whether in agreement or doubt Dóma wasn’t quite sure. Nor did she really want to know. So she hefted her precious ideas box higher in her arms and marched on with a determined hum in her throat.

  SOMEONE WAS HUMMING. Freyda woke slowly, stirring in the delicious warmth of her covers, and opened her eyes to the soft twilight of the room. It was always gloomy in the Shadowy Garden, the light caught in the in-between hours of dawn and dusk, never quite brightening into day, never quite darkening into full night. Yet always, always, the stars burned in the firmament above, as bright and clear as midnight in the desert.

  Freyda loved the stars. Seeing them shining up there reminded her of so many things – sad, lonely, but good too.

  The stars had been her refuge for so many years. Her confidants, her only friends, her seeds of hope. She still hadn’t quite adjusted to seeing them whenever she looked up, though, whatever time of day. Yet she liked that they were there, watching, waiting, listening.

  Sighing, Freyda rolled onto her back to sprawl amongst the covers, frowning up at the ceiling where shimmers of light rippled across it like water.

  The humming came closer; a soft, lilting melody that tugged at emotions Freyda thought long lost. Ones she’d buried deep after her mother had left. It was the kind of tune she’d forgotten existed, and had never expected to hear again. Or wanted to.

  A whistling tune of tumbling notes interrupted the humming, and laughter drifted in through the window. “Had enough of my song already, have you, Carroll?” a familiar voice chuckled. “Think you can do better?”

  Freyda held her breath; of course it was her. Who else hummed as easily as she breathed? Who else’s voice rolled in a constant, unconscious rhythm, so full of song that it poured out of her like the mists of a waterfall?

  Dóma. Even her name had its own rhythm, a sighing rise and fall. A sound of longing.

  Carroll whistled again, making Dóma laugh and Freyda smile.

  “Is that a challenge, Master Blackbird? Well, in that case, I accept! Come on, Sym, let’s show this poor excuse for a thrush how a real songbird sings.”

  Since he’d started it, Carroll went first, his song tumbling into the twilight air as bright as the stars shining above. Freyda closed her eyes. She loved listening to him; he was the sound of freedom, of hope, of friendship. Of imagination.

  “Well, now, wasn’t that pretty?” Dóma praised once the blackbird had fallen silent. “And yet, I think we can do better. What do you say, Sym?”

  Chuckling softly, the song thrush took up the challenge, easily demonstrating how her kind had earned its name.

  Not one to be outdone, Carroll tried again. Then Symphony. The two birds battled and entwined their melodies until Dóma was laughing. Alone in her room, Freyda smiled. She loved to hear them both sing, even if it made her feel left out, adrift. Alone.

  She couldn’t sing, or hum, or whistle. There was no music inside her, no beautiful song waiting to break out. No one had ever thought to teach her, and it was too late for her now. She lived in silence.

  “My turn,” Dóma declared.

  Carroll whistled, and Dóma copied him. Symphony echoed them both, and soon the three of them were whistling in a round. They sounded pitch-perfect and wonderful. Together, bond
ed in a way Freyda would never know.

  Envy and other emotions twisted deep inside her, hard and painful enough to make her gasp. Rolling out of bed, Freyda grabbed a pile of clothes and headed for the bathroom to get dressed. She couldn’t listen to them anymore. Not when they were so beautiful.

  And she was not.

  A LOUD CLICK stopped Carroll mid-flow, and without even a peep of farewell the blackbird flew off. Leaving Dóma staring at the nearest window, wondering just what she had to do to get Freyda’s attention.

  “I’m like a silly schoolboy,” she muttered to Symphony. “Showing off my skills to impress the girls.”

  Symphony flicked her wings and darted off into the trees, making the glass beads and mirrors dance.

  Reminded of why she was there in the first place, Dóma sighed and reached into the box. Pulling out a string of glass beads from the glittering jumble inside, she held it up to spin and sparkle in the starlight. Freyda wasn’t used to the perpetual twilight of the Garden yet, so Dóma had designed the light-catchers to try and make her feel more at home.

  Anything to get her attention.

  “You really are quite pathetic,” she told herself, but she finished hanging up the mirrors anyway. Well, after she’d gone to the trouble of finding and making them, it would be a waste not to.

  FEELING REFRESHED AFTER her shower, Freyda returned slowly to her room. In truth she was feeling a little foolish. She loved to hear Carroll sing with Symphony. It reminded her of what he really was, of what the Shadow Garden was for, who the Aekhartain were. Who she now was.

  All good, wonderful, beautiful things.

  And Dóma… Listening to Dóma was every bit as glorious as when Freyda’s wings unfolded from her back. The woman’s voice reached deeper inside her than Freyda had ever known existed. The sound of that voice could touch her soul.

  So Freyda had run away.

  “Pathetic,” she growled at herself, rubbing her hair one final time and throwing the towel into the corner. Then she grabbed a comb and headed for the window. Carroll was sitting on the sill, dipping his head and twitching his wings impatiently to attract her attention.

  Taking a deep breath, Freyda shoved all her confusing emotions down deep and summoned up a bright smile. Even after seven months in the Garden they still didn’t come naturally. Not at first. They had to be coaxed into place each morning, her muscles needing to be reminded how to move. But she was learning and practise was definitely making perfect.

  The thought of Dóma turned the smile effortlessly natural, and she leaned eagerly across the windowsill.

  Her welcome died on her lips, as she belatedly registered the silence from outside. Dóma was gone. Freyda had taken too long in the bathroom, had turned away when she should have turned towards. She’d lost her chance.

  Her smile died, her heart sank, but then a flash of light caught her eye.

  Her disappointed sigh turned into a frown, and she put aside her comb to hop onto the windowsill. Swinging her legs around, she dropped the short fall to the grass and walked barefoot to the nearest tree.

  A birch, of course: Maskai’s specialty. Reaching up, Freyda rested her hand against the solid, silver bark, felt the pulse of life underlain by the shimmer of the Entity’s vast power, and smiled at the thought that she too could do this now. She could create trees from shadow, living trees, real trees – and more than just silver birches, or trees transformed by other people’s assumptions and expectations.

  Then another shimmer of light caught her eye, and she ran her hand along the branch to where a mirror hung from a twig. It was a palm-sized shard of reflective glass, sharp edges carefully ground down and rounded off, attached by a metal chain to another piece, and another, and another. A whole string of them dangled from the branch, twirling and flashing in the starlight.

  Another chain trailed down from the next branch, this one dripping with a combination of coloured beads and glittering baubles.

  More chains, more mirrors, more beads, more shards. There was colour and light reflections, jagged random shapes and tiny little creatures. All of them shining, all of them bright, all of them catching the distant starlight and throwing it back in tiny little sparks.

  Freyda held a gleaming heart in her hand and looked back over her shoulder. Her bedroom window yawned wide less than ten paces away, but even from here she could see the ripples of reflected light dancing across the ceiling inside.

  Her fingers closed possessively around the purple heart, and she saw a different charm hanging beside it. This one was neither bright nor reflective. In fact of all the colourful ornaments this one alone was black. Small, almost insignificant, it should have passed unnoticed amongst the surrounding glitter. Freyda touched it with two fingertips and lifted it on its tiny loop of chain.

  A blackbird in miniature; perfect, unmistakable. It was as good as an engraving: whoever had done this, had done it for her. And there was only one person she knew who had definitely been out here this morning.

  Freyda’s hand closed around the blackbird and the amethyst heart it hung beside. She raised both to her lips.

  “Thank you, Dóma,” she whispered, unclipping the heart from its chain and slipping it into her pocket. The blackbird she left to twirl with the others. Carroll deserved his place in this display of beauty. But this heart, oh no, this heart belonged to her alone.

  A bright whistle announced Carroll’s arrival moments before he landed on her shoulder, followed by cheerful laughter.

  News travelled fast in the Shadow Garden. Closing her fingers around the heart in her pocket, Freyda turned away from the trees and smiled as a couple of Aekhartain walked towards her. Though they were around the same medium height, their looks could not have been more different. Ollie was dusky dark, his rumpled black hair tipped with silver, but the woman whose hand he held was pure moonlight.

  “Isn’t this pretty?” Nel cried in delight, letting go of Ollie to run across the grass. Her silver hair shone in the starlight as brightly as any mirror shard. “Oh, Freyda, it’s wonderful. Where did you get all the glass from? Ollie, come and look. Can you give us a little more light, love. This is marvellous!”

  “It wasn’t me,” Freyda said, but Nel wasn’t listening, she was too busy cooing over the different colours and shapes, while Ollie made more light to bounce off the mirrors. Though his looks didn’t exactly fit the description, as the Aekhartain of Light, Ollie could brighten any darkness. It flowed out of him as easily as Dóma’s own Song, and Freyda’s Imagination. Their Aekhartain essence wasn’t just a name, it was who they were, right down deep and all the way up to the surface. Ollie made the most of his now, making rainbows for Nel to dance between.

  Soon others came. More and more Aekhartain wandered out from beneath the trees, eager to see the newest wonder of the Shadow Garden. Before long almost everyone was there, laughing and exclaiming over the delights to be found.

  But not Dóma.

  Heart heavy, Freyda edged out of the happy crowd, back towards her bedroom window. There, with Carroll on her shoulder, she stared up at the ripples of light dancing across the ceiling and held tight to the heart in her pocket.

  Two

  THERE WAS ALWAYS something new to see in the Shadow Garden, whether alone or with friends. That was one of the reasons why Dóma loved walking so much; exploring, discovering, uncovering. There was always a new mystery to be unravelled.

  Like the lichen dripping from the branches of the grove she was walking through. Grey-green fronds that draped from the bark like ancient pieces of velvet. On closer inspection she saw beads of moisture caught up in the threads, glinting like tiny diamonds.

  Symphony trilled softly on her shoulder, and Dóma smiled as she traced her fingers just above the feathery fronds. They looked so soft, yet she didn’t quite dare to touch, not wanting to ruin the magic.

  “Are you going to loiter around down there all day? Or were you just trying to get me to reveal myself?”

/>   Turning away from the lichen, Dóma grinned up at the enormous oak sprawled in the centre of the dell. “Why would I do that? We both knew you were up there.” He always was. This was Eddie’s favourite place in the entire Shadow Garden, and where he spent most of his time. Unless she dragged him out of the branches.

  “You knew no such thing,” he muttered, pulling back into his shadows.

  It was one of those days then, Dóma thought with a grimace, picking her way across the uneven woodland floor to the base of the oak. Then she looked up.

  “Well, are you coming up or not?” he called, sounding amused.

  Dóma scowled and stared down at herself. “Did you hear that?” she shouted.

  “What?”

  “That thud, followed by a choking gasp.”

  Eddie’s head appeared again, his black curls a dark outline against the star-speckled canopy above. It was all she could see of him in the gloom. “What thud?”

  “I believe it was the death throes of chivalry.” She paused, and Eddie snorted. “Yep,” she announced. “Chivalry is now officially dead.”

  His teeth flashed in a grin. “Come on up, Pop Star. I promise not to watch. There’s chivalry for you.”

  He vanished again, leaving Dóma standing with her hands on her hips. “Some people, Sym, wouldn’t take a hint if you hit them with it.”

  “But I don’t want to climb down,” Eddie replied loudly, proving that his hearing was annoyingly good. “And I don’t want company. So if you’re determined to foist yourself upon me, you can do all the hard work.”

  “Dead, buried and rotten,” Dóma grumbled, bending down to yank off her boots. Despite a century of life in the Shadow Garden, she still dressed in the fashions of her youth. Most of the time she didn’t think much about clothes, but the long skirt and neatly pressed shirtwaist with its tight cuffs and high collar were familiar. Right now, however, she wished she had the courage to wear trousers. Perhaps even jeans.

  Freyda wore jeans. Hers were baggy and no more revealing than Dóma’s own skirts. She tipped her head thoughtfully, then sighed and sat down to haul off her stockings. No, it was no good. Freyda was tall and far too skinny. Her jeans would always be baggy until she managed to put on some of the weight life in the Institute had deprived her of.

  Dóma was not tall and definitely not skinny. In fact her skirts were a blessing for the way they hid her roundness below the waist. Jeans would not be a good look for her. Dóma imagined the tight material clinging to every one of her curves and bulges, and shuddered. No, skirts were what she knew. Even if they could be most inconvenient at times.

  Such as now. She looked up again, then scowled around the grove. No one was watching, no one would know, and if she really wanted to talk to Eddie she had no choice.

  “Some people are more trouble than they’re worth,” she told Symphony, before shooing the song thrush up into the higher branches.

  “And others are more determined than is good for them,” came the lofty reply.

  Grinning, Dóma rolled her narrow skirt up, bundling it to the side and using her waist sash to tie it safely out of the way. Then she pulled the back of her silk petticoat through her legs, tucking the tail in at her waist.

  What it lacked in elegance it more than made up for in modesty, considering her drawers were made of very fine lawn and the centre seam was open. There were days when she chose to wear more modern underwear, but this was not one of them, and she had no desire to flash her nether regions around, even to an empty forest.

  Satisfied that nothing untoward was on show, Dóma reached for the lowest branch and set her bare foot to the rough bark.

  Despite her proper mode of dress, her strict upbringing and personal modesty, Dóma was a good climber. In fact she loved the freedom of doing something she knew her father would have frowned upon. It felt wonderful to stretch and use her whole body as she pulled herself up from branch to branch, digging her toes into the firm, jagged surface of the trunk and swinging her whole weight ever upwards.

  It was almost disappointing to reach Eddie’s secret hideaway. It never took as long as she wished it would. Just as she was finding her rhythm, her body loosening beautifully into smooth, agile movement, she had to stop. Then it was a return to propriety and good behaviour.

  Crawling along the last bit of branch, Dóma plunked herself at the edge of her friend’s nest, untucked her petticoat and untied her sash with a sigh.

  “Enjoy yourself?” Eddie asked, not looking up from his book. He was far too comfortable in his spot at the heart of the oak, right where the giant branches spread out from the trunk, leaving a lovely dip that was the perfect size to cradle one person – two at a squeeze.

  Shaking her skirt down over her legs, Dóma restored her sash to its proper place around her waist and wriggled her bare toes. “It was tolerable.”

  He pulled his eyes away from his precious page long enough to grin at her. “Bet you’re glad you left off your corsets.”

  She breathed in deep, still cherishing the ability to fill her lungs and flex her spine freely as she bowed to him from her waist. “It’s the best piece of advice Alamé ever gave me,” she agreed, chuckling. Her dear friend had forbidden Dóma from wearing such an instrument of female torture and symbol of feminine oppression the moment she arrived in the Shadow Garden. It had taken Dóma a little while to grow used to it, but she’d never fought too hard to wear them again.

  “You’re a tomboy at heart,” Eddie told her, smiling. “No matter how hard you try to hide it.”

  Except she wasn’t. Not really. She liked being female and doing feminine things. She’d never wanted to rebel as a child. She’d loved studying her female accomplishments: painting, embroidery and especially playing the pianoforte. Whatever else had gone wrong in her childhood, her education wasn’t one of them. So she shook her head and smiled. “I just like climbing the occasional tree. Hardly a tomboy.”

  “Then don’t say I never give you anything.” He shrugged, returning to his book.

  Dóma laughed. “Maybe chivalry isn’t entirely dead after all.”

  He didn’t reply, just turned a page, absorbed once more in his text.

  She watched him affectionately, noticing the notebook and pen lying forgotten on his lap while he lost himself in his book. Then she saw the cover and frowned. “Frost, again? What happened to Wordsworth?”

  Eddie flicked his eyes at her over the top of the book. “Do you sing a new song every day?”

  She sniffed at the silliness of such a question. “I thought we agreed you would stop reading Frost. He only depresses you. Why aren’t you writing your own stuff?”

  “Frost isn’t depressing.”

  “Read me something cheerful by him then.”

  Eddie scowled and closed his book. “Poetry doesn’t work like that. They’re not like songs. You can’t just stick some happy words together and be done. You can only write what you really feel.”

  “Which is just another way of saying Frost is depressing.” She bit back a smile at the familiar argument. Truthfully, she quite liked some of Robert Frost’s poems. There were one or two that definitely stirred her deeper emotions, but Eddie was obsessed. It worried her. He wasn’t a naturally bleak person – unless he’d been reading too much Frost. Or thinking about his sister.

  “You’re a philistine,” he told her loftily.

  She laughed and sung a few bars of Vissi d’Arte from Tosca.

  “Puccini!” Eddie snorted derisively. “Populist rubbish.”

  Dóma switched to Bizet’s Carmen, only to be told it was a cliché. Wagner was declared dreary and Mozart’s Magic Flute was silly. But he was smiling, and Dóma was soon giggling too hard to sing.

  “As if you knew the first thing about opera before you met me.”

  “My father always said women would lead me astray.”

  They smiled at each other, and Dóma slid into the tree hollow to cuddle alongside him. When Eddie raised his arm to
wrap it around her, she put the Frost volume aside and picked up his notebook. She didn’t open it; Eddie didn’t share his poems with anyone. While it was tempting to steal a look at times, she would never abuse his trust like that. His friendship was more important than her curiosity. “Do you still miss her so badly?”

  Reclaiming the notebook, he tucked it into his bag. “I will always miss her. But that’s not why you came looking for me.”

  Since they’d talked about Eddie’s sister a lot over the years he’d lived in the Garden, and come no nearer to making him feel better about losing her, Dóma sighed and let the subject drop. Instead she snuggled into him, resting her head against his broad chest. “Why didn’t I fall in love with you?”

  Eddie had been running his fingers through her rumpled hair, but the question made him pause. “I thought you did love me.”

  She pinched her fingers at his ribs to make him twitch. “I do love you, but not like… well, you know.” Her Edwardian upbringing reared its reserved head. Despite all the songs she could and had sung over the years, sometimes she had no words. “You’re like a brother. My best friend. The person I tell everything to.”

  Rubbing his free hand over his ribs, he chuckled and gave her a squeeze. “I love you too, Pop Star. But no, not like that. Is this about Freyda?”

  She pushed up to stare at him. Even though she’d said she told him everything, she’d never mentioned Freyda. Not in that way. Not how she really felt about her – because she couldn’t put it into words herself. She didn’t know how she felt. She just knew it was different to the way she’d felt about anyone else in her life.

  Eddie laughed and tugged her back against his side. “Don’t look so shocked. Did you really think I wouldn’t notice? You’re my best friend, and you tell me everything. You talk about her all the time, and although you’re sweet and friendly to everyone, I’ve never known you to fuss over a newcomer this much. Not even me.”

  “I don’t fuss,” she grumbled. “I looked out for you.”

  He kissed her head, laughing at her again. “You made sure I had a notebook and a pen, and found me a place to hide away when I wanted peace. Then you introduced me to Drae so we could talk about poetry. You were my friend.”

  “How’s that any different to how I treat Freyda?” She didn’t think she’d been obvious, but now she was worried that the whole Shadow Garden knew.

  “You wanted me to be happy, that’s why you did those things for me. You’re sweet, Pop Star, you always want to make people happy. But you don’t just want Freyda to be happy, you want her to notice you.”

  Dóma winced. “Does everyone know?” she asked in a small voice, unable to bear the thought that she was a joke amongst the others. Oh, they wouldn’t mean it maliciously, but it would still hurt to be laughed at, even kindly.

  Especially when Freyda revealed that she didn’t feel the same and rejected her. Dóma didn’t even know if she liked girls. She hadn’t known she did herself. Or perhaps she didn’t, perhaps it was just Freyda.

  “No, Pop Star,” he told her softly, squeezing her again. “I know because I know you. To everyone else you’re just being your usual lovely self. Did the light-catchers work?”

  Of course he’d heard about those. Everyone in the whole blasted Garden probably knew about them. If the others hadn’t guessed how she felt about Freyda before, they would now. She might as well have painted love hearts with her name and Freyda’s entwined all over the wretched place.

  “I don’t know,” she grumbled, wishing she’d never had the idea in the first place. “I was singing while I worked, with Carroll and Sym joining in. You know how I get when I’m lost in something. I think we woke her up.”

  Eddie made a curious noise, encouraging her to go on.

  “She left,” Dóma said quietly, hearing her own baffled hurt in her words. She hadn’t even known it had hurt when Freyda walked away rather than coming to see her. She’d felt disappointed, naturally, but this went deeper. “She must have known I was out there. She must have heard me, but she left.”

  Tears of confusion burned her eyes and she buried her face against the solid warmth of Eddie’s chest. He proved that he really did know her then, because he pulled her closer, ran a soothing hand over her hair and said nothing. He just held her and let her cry.

  Three

  FREYDA’S HEART WAS heavy as she dragged herself to the very edge of the Shadow Garden. She’d looked everywhere, asked all the Aekhartain she’d come across, but no one could tell her where Dóma had gone.

  She’d wanted to thank her, to apologise, to see her and just listen to her talk. It was the first time she’d been unable to find the woman when she wanted to, and Freyda didn’t know what to think.

  Walking through the plantation of birch saplings, she rubbed at the fresh ache in her chest and wondered when it would fade. Carroll landed on her shoulder with a bright warble, and Freyda put her hand in her pocket, smiling as her fingers closed around the little purple heart.

  She wouldn’t give up, not yet.

  So saying, she put aside the tricky emotions and stepped into the empty space beyond the saplings. This place had no official name, lying at the very edge of the Garden where few Aekhartain dared to go, but she thought of it as Maskai’s Workshop.

  Freyda didn’t entirely blame the others for staying away, not after a glance at the bleak abyss that yawned less than ten feet from where she stood. There was nothing out there. Even the stars failed to shine through that thick blackness. All that prevented her from tumbling endlessly into it was a thin layer of power, generated by a mysterious being who could turn shadow into soil.

  Maskai was already at work, kneeling by the edge, her bare arms black to the elbows. The Entity was made from shadows herself, so it came naturally to bundle them together to make other things. For Freyda it was all down to her imagination, and how firmly she could make it stick.

  Carroll warbled again and took off, flittering over to where Maskai’s raven, Orion, was perched in the nearby copse. Like so many other residents of the Shadow Garden, neither bird liked being too close to the edge.

  A pulse of power rippled through the Garden and another square foot of silvery grass emerged from the darkness. Then Maskai looked up, smiling over her shoulder at Freyda. The beautiful raven-feather mask somehow managing to disguise her features, without completely hiding her welcoming expression.

  They had no set time for when Freyda was due to work with the Entity. There were no rules to this most unusual of apprenticeships. Freyda just knew when Maskai was working, and when she wished for company.

  “Good afternoon, Aeafreyda.” Maskai was the only person Freyda had met who could tell the time of day in the perpetual twilight of the Shadow Garden. She was also the only person who always called her by that name. It meant imagination in the Aekhartain language, but it was also a name her mother had used occasionally, affectionately, rarely and meaningfully. It felt strange to Freyda to hear it again, and yet she couldn’t imagine Maskai calling her anything else. “I hear someone left you a gift.”

  Freyda let out an exasperated sigh and knelt beside the other woman, wishing that she too could wear a mask. She didn’t know exactly why Maskai wore it, since it certainly didn’t hide who she was – nothing could do that – but Freyda wouldn’t have minded a little anonymity at the moment. “Is nothing secret in this place?”

  Maskai smiled, placing her hand down on the fresh earth and calling a tiny sapling into being. “Not for long. We have Wings, Aeafreyda. News travels fast here, and we gossip worse than any flock of sparrows.”

  That was true enough, Freyda silently agreed. After all, there wasn’t a lot to do in the Shadow Garden. Thanks to her work with Maskai, Freyda was one of the few to actually have a task here. The others had nothing but each other – and the gossip.

  “Do you know who did it?” she asked cautiously, freeing her imagination enough to enable her to pull shadows from the abyss and mould her own new
piece of Garden from nothing.

  Maskai glanced sideways at her. “Do you?”

  Freyda cupped her hands over the new ground and let a pulse of power flow free. In the trees Carroll began to sing, and beautiful feathers rippled against Freyda’s back as her wings formed from the air. Then she smiled. “Yes.”

  “Good.” Maskai nodded. “And will you do anything about it?”

  Freyda lifted her hands, surprised to see a tiny thorn tree spring up: she hadn’t known she was feeling that defensive.

  Maskai touched a finger to the nearest spike and laughed. “I’m not prying for gossip, I promise.”

  Freyda brushed her thumb against the sharp points, feeling tiny tugs on her power as the sapling grew taller in little jerks. “I know, I just don’t know what I’m going to do.”

  As the thorn tree dragged itself up to two feet tall, Maskai reached over and wrapped her shadow-stained hand around Freyda’s fingers, gently cutting off the flow of power before the thorn could drain her.

  “I am not one for giving advice,” the Entity said slowly, almost reluctantly. “I’m not very good at it.”

  Freyda raised her eyebrows, seeing the woman’s lips twist with unexpected bitterness. Maskai always seemed so wise, so knowing. Surely advice would be one of the things she was best at. She’d lived so long, seen so much. If anyone could tell Freyda what to do about her feelings, surely it was this woman.

  Maskai chuckled softly. “Don’t look so surprised, Aeafreyda. Advice is a tricky beast at best. I never know whether I want someone to listen to it, or ignore it. I shall let you decide. Matters of the heart are often as thorny as this little tree.” She touched a dark hand to the newest sapling and it trembled at her nearness, before shooting up another half-foot. “Sharp, painful and greedy.”

  The Entity pulled her hand away and the thorn seemed to droop as its unusual food source was cut off. Maskai smiled again, shaking her head. “You can never predict what will happen in love, Aeafreyda, nor can you protect yourself. To do so would be to miss out on the wonder.”

  “But you and Shaiel have been together for centuries. Surely you know each other well enough by now to predict everything.”

  Maskai snorted with amusement. “The day I learn to predict my Star, is the day the sun turns backwards. I’m sure he would say the same of me.”

  The Entity’s private smile caused envy to twist inside Freyda. Not because she wanted either Shaiel or Maskai for her own, but because she wanted that assurance. That love. That affection. She thought she wanted it with Dóma, but she didn’t know how to get it, or even where to begin. “I don’t know what to do,” she said again.

  Maskai turned to face her, the raven feathers of her mask glossily perfect in the sparkling starlight. But they couldn’t overshadow her eyes: midnight blue, deep and dark with the wisdom of millennia. “You must be brave, Aeafreyda. You must open yourself up to trust and love. You must give your heart into another person’s keeping.”

  “What if she doesn’t want it?” she whispered her most secret and pressing fear. “What if she gives it back?”

  “It will hurt,” Maskai acknowledged softly, making no attempt to lie. “Quite a bit, I should imagine, but you will have lost nothing. At least then you will know that some things are not to be. You will be bruised and sore, but you will not be broken.”

  “And if I don’t do it? If I can’t trust, or love? If I’m already broken?”

  Maskai sighed softly, sadly, touching two fingers to Freyda’s cheek. “Then you will lose. Not just this chance, but the half of your heart that has already been given into her keeping. And you will hurt her far more than she will ever hurt you.”

  A spot of warmth trailed down Freyda’s cheek. Maskai soothed it away with a gentle sweep of her thumb, before the Entity turned back to the edge and made more Garden from the shadows.

  Grateful for the time to compose herself, Freyda sniffed, wiped her face and rejoined the Entity at the edge. They worked side by side in perfect silence. They had no need to speak. Soon the thorn tree was joined by an ash sapling, a holly bush and two slender birch trees already entwined with each other.

  Maskai touched her fingers to the twin trees with a soft smile, but she said nothing. Freyda only frowned at what her imagination had done without her permission and, vowing to focus more firmly, settled back to work.

  DÓMA SLOWLY BECAME aware of something hard and warm rising and falling steadily beneath her cheek. She opened her eyes and saw white pages of a book too close for her to focus on the words. Blinking, she yawned and realised she must have fallen asleep.

  “Why didn’t you wake me?” she asked groggily, rubbing a hand over her face, relieved that her eyes weren’t sore or puffy. She hadn’t cried for long; just long enough to make her feel foolish. Such a small, silly thing to feel hurt over. “How long was I asleep?”

  “Not long,” Eddie murmured, turning a page, his voice rumbling pleasantly through his chest and against her cheek. “But you needed the rest. You’ve been thinking too much. As usual.”

  “Huh.” Dóma huffed, reaching out to swat the book from his hands. “Recognise the signs, do you? Had any promises to keep lately?”

  He chuckled and ruffled her hair, before gently levering her off his chest so he could retrieve his precious Frost. “There are reasons why we’re such good friends.”

  “Are there?” she grumbled, rubbing her numb face and trying to straighten her mussed hair. “I can’t think of any, right now.”

  “You’re always so grumpy when you wake.” He dabbed her nose gently with his finger. “I should warn Freyda about that.”

  Dóma froze as a tangled knot of emotions tightened in her gut. “Don’t be silly,” she muttered, her lips tight with confusion, fear, anxiety and longing. “She won’t need to know that. Why would she even want to know that?”

  Eddie shot her a strange look, before twisting to tuck his Frost volume into his bag with his notebook. He fussed with his things for a moment, then sighed and turned back to her. His face was serious as he rested a hand on her shoulder. “What do you want, Dóma?”

  Uncomfortable at being stared at so intently, she was about to shrug him away when she stopped. He never used her name. He always called her Pop Star, in the same way that she sometimes called him her Dark Knight. If he was using her name, he really was serious about this. Too serious for her to shrug him away in embarrassment. “What do you mean?”

  “From Freyda,” he clarified. “What do you want from Freyda?”

  This time she did shrug him off, but only so she could pull her knees up and hug them against her chest. Confused and uncertain, she looked away. “I don’t know. I’ve never felt like this before. I don’t know what I’m doing.”

  He chuckled softly, ruffling her hair again and kissing her forehead. “Poor Pop Star. This is going to be quite the learning curve for you.”

  She hunched her shoulders and rubbed her cheek against her knee. “I’m too old to learn anything new.”

  Eddie patted her leg supportively. “You’re never too old to learn.”

  “Maybe I’m too old for her.” She’d never even considered that before, but Freyda was barely eighteen, and though Dóma didn’t look much older herself, she’d been living in the Shadow Garden for over a century. Her eyes widened in horror. “Does this make me a cougar?”

  Eddie laughed and laughed. Not stopping even after she hit him over the head with his book bag and threatened to push him out of the tree.

  Eventually, when he’d wiped away his tears of mirth, he shook his head. “No, sweetheart, you’re not a cougar. Not even close. But you are a complete novice at this.”

  “Thanks for the reminder,” she grumbled defensively.

  He kissed her on the cheek to make her smile. “Talk to her. Nothing else, just talk. You need to get to know each other. Then take it from there. Whatever happens, happens. And, Pop Star?”

  She looked at him, wondering how she could feel th
e way she did about Freyda when there was so much love for this man in her heart.

  He smiled. “You’ll never be too old for her. She will always be so damn lucky to have you.”

  Feeling tearful again, she uncurled and hugged him tightly. “No more lucky than I am to have you. I love you, Dark Knight.”

  “I love you too, Pop Star. Now go away so I can finish reading my poems in peace.”

  Four

  “BE BRAVE. TRUST. Open myself up,” Freyda murmured to herself as she made her way home. She didn’t know how long she’d spent on the edge of the Shadow Garden, creating new trees with Maskai. All she knew was that she felt better by the time the Entity had turned to her and suggested they try something new.

  Freyda had never really thought much about insects and invertebrates before, but she was fascinated by them now. Her imagination was full of ingenious ants, woodlice, beetles and butterflies. Her personal favourites had been the tiny violet and silver bees that Maskai made, closely followed by her own contribution of green and purple ladybirds. Then there had been worms, spiders, flies, maggots and other less pleasant mini-beasts designed to give the Shadow Garden a real sense of life beneath its perfect, silvery canopy.

  Yet as fascinating as all that had been, it still hadn’t distracted her for long. Which was why she was walking back through the Garden now with her enormous wings trailing through the dirt, her mind caught up in a whirl of confusion.

  “I can be brave,” she told Carroll, and received a whistle of support from the bird on her shoulder. Yes, bravery she could do. It was just trust she couldn’t. Even the thought of leaving herself vulnerable and open to someone else made her wings tighten against her back, her muscles cramping hard enough to hurt.

  “That’s not really being brave, though, is it?” Sighing, she plunked herself on a nearby tree stump, which seemed to flow up out of the Garden just for her to sit on. “Thank you,” she said absently, letting her wings relax to either side, the feathers sweeping gracefully onto the grass. Resting her elbows on her knees, she cupped her chin in her hands.

  Hopping off her shoulder, Carroll bounced on the ground until he faced her. Then he dipped his head, flicked his tail and flipped his wings twice.

  “Easy for you to say,” she grumbled. “You’re a bird. You pick a new girl every spring, make a nest and some eggs, raise some babies, then its off on your jollies until next spring.”

  He made a scornful noise.

  “Yes, but I’m not part of the grand old circle of life anymore. My purpose isn’t just to eat, live and breed. Humans moved past that some time ago.”

  He chattered at her.

  She glared back.

  A ripple of laughter made them both jump. Carroll darted to the protection of her shoulder, while Freyda pulled her wings in so swiftly they vanished. She looked up to find they were being watched from the dappled gloom beneath the trees.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you. You just looked so funny eyeballing each other like that.” Alamé smiled as she stepped out of the shadows and sat gracefully down on the stump that materialised for her, directly opposite Freyda’s. “I certainly didn’t mean to frighten your wings away. They’re beautiful.”

  The compliment warmed her, but Freyda still frowned. “It wasn’t your fault. I haven’t quite mastered them yet. They seem to come and go whenever they feel like it, rather then when I want them to.”

  Alamé chuckled softly, holding up her hand as her scarlet cardinal, Ember, dashed out of the shadows. “I know what that’s like.” Ember barely even landed before taking off again, this time with Carroll in hot pursuit.

  Without her blackbird on her shoulder, or her wings at her back, Freyda suddenly felt exposed as the beautiful woman turned her golden eyes on her. Alamé’s beauty really was like the Fire of her Aekhartain essence: warm, sinuous, sensuous and dangerous. Whenever Freyda was with her, she couldn’t help but stare.

  She wondered if Alamé noticed, or if she minded the attention. Even dressed down in ratty cargo pants and a plain white t-shirt, covered by an oversized, checked shirt tied at her waist, Alamé was still the most gorgeous person Freyda had ever known.

  If she noticed the staring, Alamé didn’t say anything, just leant forward to rest her elbows on her knees. Then she gave a mischievous smile. “I hear somebody woke up to a present this morning.”

  Just like that, Freyda went from uncomfortable in this woman’s presence to rolling her eyes in exasperation. “Not you as well. Even Maskai asked me about it.”

  Alamé grinned. “No doubt a little bird told her.” As if on cue, Ember dashed back to land on her shoulder, nibbled affectionately at her ear and skimmed off again. Carroll darted between them, piping his alarm call in annoyance.

  “I’m sure several did,” Freyda agreed sourly.

  Alamé laughed. “Don’t be like that, Frey. I think it’s sweet.”

  Thinking back to the hanging mirrors and colourful beads, Freyda smiled softly, her fingers searching out the little heart tucked secretly in her pocket.

  “Really sweet,” Alamé said. “You’ll make an adorable pair. It was about time Dóma found herself someone to love. I was starting to worry about her.” Sometimes she sounded more like Dóma’s mother than one of her closest friends. It still surprised Freyda that such a seemingly-wild spirit could still cluck like a hen over a chosen chick. She couldn’t help wondering what it would feel like to have someone care so much about her.

  The thoughts made Freyda’s smile vanish and her shoulders hunch up to her ears. If her wings had still been visible on her back, she knew she’d have them mantled protectively about herself. She didn’t need anyone to care for her; she looked after herself. She just wished she could stop others from interfering. “Why does everyone care so much?”

  She’d expected Alamé to laugh, to say something pithy and amusing about gossip and having too much time on Aekhartain hands. Instead her expression grew serious. “We like you, Freyda. We don’t know you too well yet – I suspect that’ll take years, rather than months – but we love Dóma. We want her to be happy. If you’re what she wants, then that’s her choice. She’s earned the right.” When Freyda shifted uncomfortably at this hint of a past that she neither knew nor shared, unlike the older Aekhartain, Alamé gave her a flat stare. “But if you hurt her, we’ll do more than gossip embarrassingly about you.”

  The threat should have chilled her, but Freyda was used to living in an antagonistic atmosphere. She’d never needed to be liked, had never known what it felt like. So this conversation now felt far more familiar than a kind, friendly one. At least she knew how to react to this.

  Her spine straightened, her chin lifted and her gaze grew just as hard as the woman’s in front of her. “What happens between Dóma and me is no one’s business but our own.”

  As soft and sexy as the woman looked, Alamé was no pushover. Like the fire at the heart of her, she could crackle and snap in a tame grate, or rampage through a forest leaving nothing but destruction in her wake. Her skin started to glow from within as she matched Freyda glare for glare. The red curls draped over her shoulders began to writhe with a life of their own; a fiery medusa with hair of flames instead of snakes. “If you hurt her, it most definitely will be my business.”

  “And if I don’t?” Freyda almost growled, matching stubbornness against protective interference. “If she hurts me, what then?”

  The ferocity drained out of Alamé as if it had never been there. Her hair settled back on her shoulders, her skin cooled and her eyes turned molten with amusement. “Dóma wouldn’t hurt a fly. Couldn’t even if she wanted to. She won’t place even the tiniest bruise on your heart.”

  It was just what Freyda should have wanted to hear, but she couldn’t bring herself to believe it. She snorted ungraciously.

  Alamé tilted her head to one side, making Freyda squirm beneath her thoughtful gaze. “You need to talk to her.”

  Freyda blinked. Whatever she’
d imagined might pop out of Alamé’s mouth next, that hadn’t been it. She’d expected to be scolded, threatened or warned off again. She could have coped with that. “And say what?” she was off-balance enough to blurt.

  This time Alamé laughed. “Oh, the truth will probably do. Any kind of truth,” she added, since Freyda knew she was looking downright baffled. “About you, her, the world, life, the universe. Everything. Or nothing. Just talk.” Smiling smugly, the Aekhartain of Fire held up her hand again. Ember appeared instantly with a soft peep, and together woman and cardinal got up and walked away.

  Leaving Freyda sitting on her stump feeling, well, stumped.

  It wasn’t long before Carroll came back again. He landed on her shoulder and pressed a quivering wing against her cheek.

  “Talk to her, she says,” she murmured to her blackbird, reaching up to run the back of a finger across his glossy chest. “As simple and as complicated as that.”

  Carroll chucked and took off again.

  Accepting the hint, Freyda stood up with a sigh, shoved her hands in her pockets, took hold of the little purple heart and ambled on towards home.

  “TALK TO HER. Okay, I can do that. I’m good at talking.” Dóma grimaced, because actually she wasn’t all that good at talking to people. She made a great listener, but initiating conversation and taking the lead was a little bit beyond her. It wasn’t that she was shy, as such, but she just didn’t think she had anything interesting to say. Nothing that anyone would want to listen to, anyway.

  Other than Eddie, but he was her best friend. He had a duty to find her fascinating, even if she was talking in-depth about the differences between Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev’s musical interpretations of Romeo and Juliet. And even he’d fallen asleep while she’d enthusiastically laid out her case.

  “I can do this, I can do this,” she encouraged herself, fingers clenching tightly around the tray she was carrying, as if she could physically keep a stranglehold on her failing courage. “No, no, I can’t!”

  Turning around, she dumped the tray on a nearby table and was halfway back to the kitchens before she caught hold of herself.

  “This is stupid,” she told the closed door, which had made her pause long enough to regain control. “She’s just a person.”

  Dóma’s head thumped repeatedly against the wood. Yes, Freyda was just a person, she also happened to be the one person in the Shadow Garden who mattered the most to her.

  “Stupid.” It really was, not just her behaviour, but her feelings too. She’d known Freyda for seven months, but she didn’t really know her. Oh, they’d spoken often, spent time together, made friends.

  Looking back at it all, there was nothing particularly special about any of it. They’d never even been alone together.

  There was no reason why her heart beat faster in her presence – or just the thought of her presence. There was no specific moment when her whole being had suddenly perked up and said mine. There was no point when she’d suddenly decided that she was more important than anyone or anything else.

  It just happened. Somehow, somewhere, somewhen: Freyda mattered.

  It might have happened the first time she’d seen her, lying unconscious, blonde hair neatly braided and looped over one shoulder. She’d seemed so young, so battered and bruised. She’d been vulnerable then, and yet, strangely at peace. She’d looked contented in a way Dóma had yet to even glimpse since.

  Then she’d opened those blue, blue eyes.

  Ah, Dóma’s heart sighed. So that had been when. Right at the moment when she’d first looked into Freyda’s eyes. That was when her world had been shaken all the way down to its foundations and everything had been rearranged. It was like coming home and finding all of her possessions had been painted bright green. A jolting, confusing shock, and one she still wasn’t sure she liked, but had little or no chance of changing back.

  Everything that had happened since that moment had only made things worse. Her emotions had been tugged this way and that, as though Freyda was forcibly making a space for herself inside Dóma’s heart. She couldn’t help wondering if Freyda had been feeling the same.

  Perhaps, even now, there was a great, gaping hole of confusion sitting inside Freyda’s heart, waiting for a Dóma-shaped answer to fill it.

  “I can only hope,” she whispered to the door, then straightened her shoulders and stepped back. Turning around, she found that she was being watched. Fara stood just a few paces away, smiling softly with understanding.

  “Sometimes hope is the best thing we have.” Closing the distance between them, the gentle-mannered Aekhartain took Dóma’s hand and squeezed it reassuringly. The warmth of her touch and the sweetness of her smile filled Dóma with a new rush of confidence. “Whatever happens, don’t give up. Not on hope, and not on her. The prize is always worth it.”

  Knowing that this was a woman speaking from experience, Dóma tightened her fingers in return, murmured her thanks and walked back to where she’d left the tray. The tea was probably cold by now, but she didn’t dare return to the kitchen for more.

  Checking that the biscuits and muffins hadn’t been snitched by some other passing Aekhartain, Dóma straightened her shoulders, took a deep breath and walked the last few steps to Freyda’s room.

  If hope was all she had, then she was still lucky. Hope was a good thing, a great thing… Well, it was something else to think of, anyway, besides the fear squirming in her belly.

  Balancing the tray on one hand, she knocked on the door and waited, shifting nervously from foot to foot. This was a good plan. It was the right thing to do. Eddie had said they needed to talk, and he was right. Fara had said not to give up, and she was right too. But in order to do both she had to take the first step, make the first move.

  The door opened and she stared up into surprised blue eyes. Her nerves settled instantly and she smiled. “Hello, Freyda. I thought you might like some tea.”

  Five

  EVEN THOUGH SHE knew it was rude, Freyda stood staring for a long, long moment. Dóma was here, at her door, with a tray of tea and biscuits. Wanting to come in.

  When Dóma’s bright smile started to fade, the sparkle dying in those honest eyes, Freyda stepped hurriedly back. “Come in,” she blurted, all awkward gruffness.

  In truth she’d been pacing her room for what felt like hours, thinking over her conversations with Maskai and Alamé and trying to decide what to do. Talking sounded like an excellent idea, but Freyda wasn’t any good at talking. She never knew what to say. She wasn’t interesting enough or educated enough to start a conversation.

  Dóma knew all kinds of clever and fascinating things about art and music, history and literature. Freyda knew nothing about art, she couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket, history had always bored her in lessons and she’d only just started reading Shakespeare. Poetry remained a mystery to her.

  Before all of that, however, Freyda hadn’t even known how to find Dóma despite searching everywhere for her yesterday. It had made her realise that she didn’t even know where the other woman lived. Did she, like Freyda, have rooms in the grand mansion at the heart of the Shadow Garden? Or did she live in one of the quaint cottages scattered amongst the trees?

  Even after seven months of getting to know one and other in the crowd of Aekhartain, it pained Freyda to realise that she didn’t know even the most basic things about Dóma.

  What she did know was that Dóma’s voice was the most beautiful thing she had ever heard, that listening to her sing stirred her soul and that seeing her smile felt like the greatest reward in the universe.

  So she’d spent her entire morning pacing back and forth in her room, trying to figure out a plan. Trying to rouse her courage and nurture her trust enough to open up. The amethyst heart was warm and worn from where her fingers had rubbed constantly over its smooth curves.

  Now Dóma was here. She’d tracked her down, taking the first step, made the opening move. She’d come to Freyda. With tea, biscu
its and smiles.

  This was going to be a disaster.

  And she was staring again, as Dóma cautiously laid the tray on the crowded desk, the only reasonably uncluttered surface in the room. “Oh, sorry, let me get that.” Freyda lurched forward and started shifting books onto the floor. “Please excuse the mess.” She gathered up an armful of clutter and looked frantically around for somewhere to stash it. Where had it all come from?

  Seven months ago she’d arrived with one book to her name. She’d never had stuff before, yet now her room was overflowing with it. Gifts from her new friends, books borrowed from libraries the world over, souvenirs taken from all the new places she’d discovered since her wings had given her the freedom to travel wherever her imagination could wish.

  “You should see my sitting room,” Dóma chuckled, sounding placidly calm. “You can hardly move for knick-knacks and bric-a-brac. I think all Aekhartain are secret hoarders. We have too much time on our hands.”

  Freyda wanted to see where Dóma lived so badly she had to turn away, lest she said something stupid. A spot in the corner that didn’t currently have anything in it caught her eye, so she dropped her armful and ran a hand through her hair. “I really should try and organise it,” she muttered, kicking a Greetings from Bognor! shell sculpture back into the pile. “I don’t even know why I bought half of this stuff. It’s mostly junk.”

  “Maybe it seemed like a good idea at the time. I think that’s how the tourist industry works.”

  She turned to find Dóma smiling shyly, humming softly below her breath and looking around the room. Slowly, eventually, her eyes dared to meet Freyda’s for the first time since she’d stepped through the door.

  Everything stilled. All the nerves and confusion, the fear and embarrassment, all faded away. There was only Dóma; there was only now.

  Freyda smiled. “Did you say something about tea?”

  THAT SMILE LOOSENED a great knot of tension that had twisted up Dóma’s insides. Ever since Freyda had opened the door and simply stared at her, Dóma had been feeling terrible. Freyda didn’t want company, she was just being polite, she was secretly wishing Dóma would hurry up and leave. A big part of her wanted to mumble a polite apology, abandon the tea tray and flee.

  Thankfully a small, but incredibly stubborn part of her kept repeating Fara’s words over and over. It was too soon to forsake hope. She had to give things a chance, give Freyda a chance. If she baulked at this first – and really rather minor – hurdle, then she’d never get anywhere. She wouldn’t deserve to.

  Flexing her fingers to release some of the tension, Dóma smiled and touched the side of the teapot. “It’s gone cold, I’m afraid. I underestimated the distance from the kitchen.”

  “Oh, no worries,” Freyda rushed to reassure her. “I’m not really a big fan of tea.”

  Dóma’s heart sank and her face probably looked as dismayed as Freyda’s now did.

  “Should I – ?”

  “I didn’t mean –”

  Their words collided and they both broke off with an awkward laugh. Not knowing what to do next, Dóma stared at the cold teapot in her hands and swirled it gently.

  It had been a good plan, but flawed from the start. Why hadn’t she known that Freyda didn’t like tea? It was such a small detail, but curiously vital. They’d known each other for seven months. How had she not known?

  A pale hand slipped past her eyes to grab a biscuit. “The scientists didn’t really go in for tea,” Freyda explained, munching on her stolen snack. “The milk rations rarely lasted beyond a couple of days. Everyone tended to drink black coffee instead.”

  Seizing the olive branch with desperate hands, Dóma put down the teapot and snatched up the muffin plate. “Black coffee?” She wrinkled her nose. “It’s a wonder any of you got to sleep at night.” She bit into a muffin, searching for comfort.

  Freyda chuckled. “I only had one cup a day. I don’t know about the scientists, but I doubt there were enough rations for them to have many more. Not if they didn’t want to run out for weeks on end.”

  Dóma finished off her muffin and offered the plate towards Freyda, thinking she definitely needed feeding up. If coffee was so strictly rationed, and milk barely available, she hated to think what the rest of Freyda’s diet had been like. “Here, the blueberry choc-chip ones are really good.”

  As the plate was shoved insistently under her nose, Freyda took one of the recommended muffins with a smile. “I remember the first time I tried chocolate.” She picked off one of the chips and stared at it, before putting it in her mouth. Her eyes closed and she hummed happily. “Bliss.”

  “When was that?” Dóma asked, making a private note to bribe Emin with whatever it took to make sure he baked something chocolaty every day.

  Freyda nibble at her muffin while she thought about the answer. “My second day here, I think,” she mumbled, cupping her free hand below her chin to catch any escaped crumbs as she took a bigger bite.

  “Here?” Dóma echoed incredulously. “Do you mean to say that you lived for eighteen years without any chocolate at all?”

  Dóma didn’t know what kind of outraged expression was on her face, but Freyda actually giggled. So much that she had to clap a hand over full mouth and swallow down a few choking coughs before she could speak.

  Then she shook her head, her giggles deepening to chuckles. “Oh, poor Dóma. You’re lucky you don’t live in the world today, outside of the cities, at least. The lack of chocolate would soon be the last thing on your mind.”

  Dóma was glad Freyda found something amusing about that, but personally she was appalled. Just what kind of world were those cities running? Oh, she knew chocolate was a petty thing to miss, but it was a symptom of a much larger problem.

  She eyed Freyda’s slender frame again and silently vowed to beg Emin for two solid meals a day and as many chocolate treats as he could produce. No matter what the glowering grump demanded in return.

  Freyda’s amusement softly died away and she balled up the little paper muffin cup, tossing it into a nearby bin. “It wasn’t that bad, Dóma. Don’t look so upset. I never went hungry.”

  She didn’t believe that, and the scepticism must have shown on her face because Freyda’s mouth twisted. “Not after I moved to the Institute, anyway. My mother,” – her voice cracked on the word – “she tried her hardest, but it was tough. At least at the Institute I was fed. I had a roof over my head. It was a secure place to grow up. Better than many get.”

  Though Freyda didn’t talk about the Institute much, Dóma had gleaned enough titbits over the last few months to know things hadn’t been quite so simple. Anything that could bring Shaiel back to the Shadow Garden in a towering rage that even Maskai had been hesitant to approach, had to be more than just a secure roof over a young woman’s head.

  She’d heard whispers of experiments and neglect. She only had to spend a little time with Freyda to know she’d been hurt deeply by whatever she’d grown up through. But Freyda wasn’t the only one with an active imagination. Dóma truly hoped some of the things she’d considered weren’t true. Even now the thought of Freyda suffering, young, abandoned, alone, brought tears to her eyes.

  “It wasn’t so bad, really,” Freyda said softly, trying to comfort her.

  Dóma felt ashamed. What right had she to get upset over something she didn’t even understand? What right had she to seek comfort from the victim?

  “Sorry,” she sniffled, firmly wiping her hands beneath her eyes and ordering herself to buck up. “It’s the thought of a life without chocolate. A more terrible fate is hard to imagine.”

  It was a feeble attempt at humour, but Freyda was kind enough to laugh. She was probably relieved about the change of subject. “Well, there’s no chance of that happening now,” she said, taking a second muffin from the tray. “Did you make these?”

  Dóma wished she had. It would have been nice to be able to do this for Freyda. To make her smile so easily, to ma
ke her something she could really enjoy. “Sadly not. My culinary skills have earned me an eternal ban from the communal kitchens across the Shadow Garden.”

  Freyda raised her eyebrows. “You can’t be that bad.”

  “Oh, I promise you, I can,” Dóma replied ruefully. “Emin barely lets me in through the door to get things from the fridge and the pantry these days.”

  “Emin?” Freyda frowned. “I don’t think I’ve met him.”

  “Consider yourself lucky.”

  And suddenly it was easy to talk. Dóma found herself recounting tales of the Garden, not just of herself, the kitchen and Emin, but of all its various residents. Freyda sat there, laughing and listening, asking questions, being interested. They were talking. It wasn’t hard, but it felt good. Really good.

  “We should do this again sometime,” Freyda said, when Dóma started gathering up the tray, not wanting to overstay her welcome. It was time for Freyda to meet with Maskai anyway.

  Emptying the useless teapot out of the window, Dóma smiled over her shoulder. “I’d like that.”

  The pause that followed recaptured their earlier awkwardness, and Dóma held the teapot tightly as she took a deep breath and turned.

  Freyda opened her mouth. “Same time tomorrow?” they both said, and laughed, the awkwardness broken once more.

  “I’ll bring the muffins,” Dóma promised, scooping up the empty plates and putting them back on the tray, glancing around for anything else she might have forgotten.

  “And I’ll find some coffee. Do you drink coffee?”

  Dóma hated coffee, but for Freyda she’d drink it by the gallon. “Only if I can have milk.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Freyda promised, smiling and opening the door for her.

  Dóma’s own smile lasted all the way back down to the kitchen, where it faded into a determined scowl, before she marched inside to deal with Emin.

  She felt like a knight going into the lists to win a duel for her lady’s favour. Preparing her teapot-shaped lance, she strode into battle. There was a grouchy troll to be tamed and chocolate treats to be won.

  And this was only the start.

  IT HAD BEEN a good day. Freyda felt like she was fizzing with excitement as the wind whipped through her hair, nipping at her bare arms, riffling through the feathers of her relaxed, half-open wings.

  After her wonderful morning with Dóma, she’d worked alongside Maskai, making beautiful things for the Garden: cherry trees, apple trees, magnolias that were growing at an accelerated rate, as if they couldn’t wait to flower. Roses had sprouted beneath her eager feet, daisies blooming in her shadow. Maskai had taken one look at her and laughed.

  She was so full of hopeful happiness that she’d had to leave the Shadow Garden. She simply could not face returning to her cold, cluttered room and finding it empty of Dóma’s presence.

  So she came here. To the wide world. To the mountaintops where no one was watching to see her spread her glorious black wings and let the wind lift her off her feet.

  Only a little bit, though.

  When Carroll scolded angrily on her shoulder, Freyda laughed and drew her wings in. The sharp, icy stones bit at her bare feet as she settled her soles back down. Then on the next gust she fanned open her feathers and let the wind scoop her up once more. It felt like a giant hand gripping her around the middle, lifting her like a doll, before gently setting her down again.

  Laughing, Freyda crouched, spreading her wings carefully, and offered a hand to the furious Carroll. He jumped onto her fingers and hopped up and down, chattering and scolding. She just drew him close to her chest and let him rage.

  Poor Carroll. Here they were somewhere in South America, right atop the bleak and glorious Andes, and he was probably freezing. Blackbirds were not designed for extreme altitude. Neither was she, but though she was dressed only in ragged jeans and a faded grey t-shirt that had definitely seen better days, Freyda wasn’t the least bit cold.

  There was snow on the ground all around her, and a thousand feet below an enormous glacier was carving out a new valley. Yet her bare feet felt fine against the uneven ground. She wriggled her toes amongst the gritty frost.

  “I’m getting stronger,” she told the fluffed-up bird in her hand. He gave a grumpy peep.

  Taking pity on him, she imagined a bubble of summer sunshine and wrapped it carefully around his delicate feathers.

  He deflated like a punctured beach ball, shuffled his wings and sprang back up to her shoulder. She was careful to keep the bubble around him, flexing new muscles her imagination hadn’t even known it had.

  Life in the Shadow Garden had been good for her. Her imagination was flourishing under Maskai’s expert instruction. There really was no limit to the extent of her powers now; if she only had the wit and strength to imagine it.

  With such things in mind, she straightened up and walked to the very edge of the mountain cliff. Carroll chattered a warning, but she shushed him softly.

  She’d stood on high places like this many times before. Heights had never held any fear for her, even before she’d found her wings. After seeing Irene free herself from the Institute’s fierce, stifling grip and settle into her new home, Freyda had gone everywhere else in the world but back to the place she’d once lived.

  She’d used her imagination to explore, to learn, to see. Time after time it had led her to places like this. High places, open spaces, deserted and isolated crags, wonders no human eyes would ever see.

  The wind clawed at her, tugging her hair free from its braid to whip about her head. It swirled around her face and shoulders like a nest of blonde snakes, while the wind ruffled her feathers and pushed her backwards. She held her wings tight and stiffened her legs, standing firm in the face of such force.

  Yes, she’d stood in many such places before, looking out, looking down. But never up.

  She’d never quite dared. Her life had changed so much in recent months, her whole existence had been transformed. She had wings, real, genuine, fine-feathered wings. But she’d never flown.

  The Aekhartain didn’t fly. Their wings were merely a symbol of their immortality, something that a lucky few could also use to travel from realm to realm.

  Except Freyda was the Aekhartain of Imagination. She could do whatever she wanted.

  “You might want to go home now,” she murmured to Carroll.

  The blackbird gave a disgruntled chirp.

  And Freyda stepped over the edge.

  Six

  “SOMEONE SOUNDS HAPPY.”

  Dóma stopped mid-hum and turned to smile at the two men walking along the path towards her. “It’s another beautiful day in the Shadow Garden,” she practically trilled, laughing as Symphony mimicked her. “What isn’t there to be happy about?”

  While Demero looked up at the same sky they had every day and night in the Garden, Shaiel raised a pale eyebrow. “Nice flowers,” he said.

  Dóma beamed. “Aren’t they?” She looked down at the armful of roses, irises, daisies, marigolds and other wildflowers she had no names for. “I found them while I was walking. A whole meadow full of them. I’ve never seen the like in the Garden before.” Pretty as the flowers in the Shadow Garden usually were, they tended towards silver and purple shades, and of a species and shape never to be found on Earth.

  “Where was this?” Demero asked, no doubt thinking of a smile on a certain someone’s face when he came home with fresh flowers to brighten her day.

  “Just keep walking,” Dóma told him, willing to spread her joy around. “You can’t miss them. There are so many.”

  Shooting her a grateful smile, he didn’t even bother to say farewell before jogging off.

  Shaiel could only chuckle as his friend abandoned him. “It’s good for the Garden that Maskai has an assistant at last.”

  Having been busy smelling a delicate bunch of violets, Dóma tilted her head. “Isn’t the Shadow Garden Maskai’s own creation?”

  “In essenc
e, yes,” Shaiel agreed, turning around so he could walk her home. He held out his arms, silently offering to carry the flowers, but Dóma just tightened her grip. These were hers; she wasn’t surrendering them to anyone. “The Shadow Garden is Mask’s power given physical form, but the details tend to be down to other people.”

  Dóma frowned. “Does this mean I’ve just stolen someone’s flowers?”

  He chuckled. “I doubt it. If there are as many as you say, it wouldn’t matter even if you had. But I think these flowers are more likely due to Maskai’s new assistant.”

  “Freyda made these?” Dóma asked, voice faint, her arms tightening even more.

  “I believe so.”

  No wonder Dóma had felt so delighted and possessive of them when she’d first stepped into the unexpected meadow. She’d had the strangest feeling that they were meant for her, and had immediately set about gathering up as many as possible. Which was completely out of character, if she’d stopped to think about it. Dóma never picked wildflowers, wanting them to be enjoyed by as many people as possible. Except these flowers felt like they were hers.

  Perhaps they were.

  “You’d best put them in some water before you crush them,” Shaiel advised quietly.

  Dóma blinked, astonished to find that they’d reached her house. She hadn’t even remembered walking.

  “Heart’s luck, Dóma,” Shaiel murmured, touching his forehead in a small salute before he headed back down the path again.

  Dóma could only watch him go, absently admiring the glint of starlight on his pale hair. A low buzz of a silver-striped bee made her look down, squeaking as it settled on a daisy right beneath her nose.

  “Shoo!” She blew softly to make the insect fly away, and hurried into the house. Water and vases. She wanted to make these flowers last as long as possible. It seemed vitally important that they didn’t have the slightest chance to wither. She didn’t know what she’d do if they died.

  “They’re not going to die,” she scolded herself, whistling for Symphony to come in before she closed the door.

  By the time she reached her kitchen and carefully spread the flowers out on the table, she was humming again.

  FREYDA FELL.

  After that first, exhilarating, terrifying moment of weightlessness, knowing there was nothing beneath her feet but a glacier thousands of feet below, came only fear.

  Carroll was snatched away by the roaring wind, and Freyda screamed. Arms and legs flailing, wings fluttering uselessly at her back, she tried to see her doom rushing up to meet her, but her hair tangled over her face leaving her blind, falling and terrified.

  This wasn’t how she’d imagined it at all. She’d thought her wings would open, that the wind would catch her and she’d drift effortlessly upwards into the endless sky.

  Instead she fell, plummeting like a stone.

  I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die.

  The thought ran round and round inside her head, growing louder and louder until she could finally hear it over the roar of the wind and the wail of her own fear.

  No, she didn’t want to die. She had too much to live for now. Maskai, the Shadow Garden, the Aekhartain, Carroll.

  Dóma.

  Whumph!

  Her wings spread of their own accord, catching the air and cupping it like a parachute.

  Her momentum was immediately arrested, but she screamed again as the strain burned across her back. All her muscles felt lined with fire, from her shoulders to the very tips of her wings. She could feel her tendons creaking, ready to snap, her bones unexpectedly fragile under forces they were never designed to meet.

  Tears were ripped from her eyes as Freyda’s imagination went into frantic action, changing the size and shape of her wings. Making them stronger, wider, more flexible, until they were practically a pair of parachutes, the feathers flattening into silk.

  Gasping, she hung in the air, like a rag doll without any stuffing. Her legs dangled lifelessly as she drifted slowly away from the cliff. The wind seemed gentle now, tender as it wafted her up and away from the danger, as though she was little more than a dandelion seed floating over a summer meadow.

  A trill of alarm heralded the arrival of Carroll and he swooped anxiously around her, darting in close before whirling away again. Freyda smiled weakly, making sure his heat bubble was still in place; there was no reason he should suffer for her stupidity.

  Then she watched him, saw how his wings moved, how he worked his little muscles. Flitter, flitter, beat, beat, beat. It took so much effort to keep such a small creature in the sky. Freyda knew she could never do that.

  A shadow swept over them and she looked up. She gasped again, but in wonder this time, as Carroll piped with alarm and flew into the safety of her waiting hands.

  The condor took no notice of them, gliding serenely along on its enormous wings. Flat, broad and so very wide, they looked more like rafts than wings, as the great bird surfed the capricious air currents of the mountains.

  Barely even registering what she was doing, Freyda let her imagination flow, reshaping her wings once again until her long black feathers spread wide above her. Inside she was changing too, her lungs growing, her bones hollowing, new tendons and ligaments forming, her whole being finding ways to lighten and strengthen itself.

  Until the wind flowed easily over and around her, buoying her up rather than pushing her down. Carrying her through the sky like she’d always dreamed.

  As the Andean condor drifted onwards in its relentless search for food, Freyda released Carroll from her hands. The blackbird trilled joyously and fluttered around her, coming to rest on her spine, nestled between the warmth of her wings.

  There he poured forth his glorious music as together they soared through the endless, mountain skies.

  DÓMA’S KITCHEN WAS full of flowers. The air was rich with a dozen different scents. They should have been cloying, overwhelming, unpleasant even, yet there was a delicate lightness to the blend that made her want to breathe them in, savour them, enjoy them.

  Still humming to herself, she picked the vases up one by one and distributed them around her little cottage. Irises in the entrance hall, roses in the sitting room, marigolds and cowslips on her bedroom windowsill. She saved the gorgeous violets for last. These she placed in the very heart of her home, standing them on the most precious thing she owned: her piano.

  Then she sat down at the keyboard and played, while the cool breeze wafted in through the open window, stirring the scents of the wildflowers that filled her home.

  FREYDA HAD TO come down eventually. No amount of creative ignoring could hide the fact that she’d hurt her back. There was no imagination in the universe strong enough to instantly repair such badly torn muscles. She was lucky she hadn’t broken, ruptured or permanently damaged anything.

  She’d been able to put it aside for a little while, though. A glorious while, short but so very sweet.

  As her feet touched the Earth once more, however, pain returned and she collapsed on to the hard stone with a groan. “Next time, remind me to start small,” she muttered at Carroll.

  The blackbird ruffled his feathers and declined to comment.

  Yet even through her pain she was smiling. Grinning, beaming actually. It had been wonderful, amazing, more than she could have ever imagined.

  The thought made her laugh.

  She would have to tell the others, but maybe not yet. Freyda liked exploring the world for many reasons, mostly because her life before had been so restricted and she could barely remember anywhere but the inside of the Institute. The spirit of adventure was very attractive too, but she also travelled in search of solitude. The Shadow Garden was wonderful, the Aekhartain so beautifully accepting. Yet it could grow overwhelming, almost smothering.

  Out here she didn’t have to worry about offending her new friends, she didn’t have to smile or laugh at someone’s jokes. She didn’t have to try to be interesting. She did
n’t even have to think if she didn’t want to.

  She loved her new friends, but she loved being alone too.

  Except this time she wished she’d brought company. She wished someone else had seen her fly. She wanted to share her exhilaration. She wanted someone else to have felt the heart-stopping fear of her fall, especially when it turned to sheer joy. She wanted to share the skies with more than just Carroll.

  But not just anyone would do.

  Freyda’s back throbbed, but her groan had little to do with physical pain as she sank down and rolled gingerly onto her back. Yes, she’d spoken to Dóma that day, and it had been wonderful. It was more than she’d hoped for, yet so much less than she wanted.

  “I don’t even know what I want,” she grumbled, throwing a hand across her eyes to block out the glare of the midday sun, the icy ground feeling painfully nice against her burning muscles.

  Carroll chirruped close to her ear, then pecked her on the cheek.

  Lifting her arm, she glared at him. “Some friend you are.”

  He flicked his wings and hopped impatiently on the spot.

  Growling wordlessly at his unfeeling demands, she half-rolled towards him, whimpering as her left wing was freed. Then she scooped Carroll into her hand and gritted her teeth, forcing her muscles to cooperate. Her left wing flopped heavily over them both. It was inelegant and downright agonising, but it was as good as it was going to get.

  Clutching her blackbird to her chest, she rested her head on the hard, gritty ground and imagined home. The bright stars, the cool night, the soft sheets of her enormous bed in the blissful peace of her cluttered bedroom.

  The cold ground melted away beneath her, changing into a firm mattress and plush covers that embraced her aching body like the sweetest of hugs.

  Maintaining enough presence of mind to move Carroll out of the way, Freyda slumped onto her stomach, let her throbbing wings sprawl gracelessly across the bed, and buried her head in the pillows.

  “Home again,” she sighed.

  Carroll whistled his thanks and darted out of the window.

  Turning her head just enough to allow her to breathe, Freyda noticed the play of reflected light on her ceiling and fell asleep with a smile on her face.

  Seven

  HAVING TRIUMPHED OVER Emin in the kitchen – thanks mostly to an unexpected appearance by Ollie, on a sweets and treats raid of his own – Dóma sashayed triumphantly through the corridors of the mansion. No one quite knew where it had come from, or from whose experience Maskai had created it, but the big house was at the centre of the Shadow Garden. It was the place where all new Aekhartain dwelt until they wanted a home of their own. Some Aekhartain stayed here for barely a few days, others never left.

  She passed one such resident on the stairs, and couldn’t even get angry when he stole a macaroon from her plate.

  “I was saving that.”

  “Yes, for me.” Drae smiled, fitting the whole biscuit into his mouth with a wink.

  It was so lovely to see him smiling without his sunglasses on that Dóma could only stare into his unusual blue eyes. They were deep and beautiful, and so at odds with the darkness of his skin.

  He shifted uncomfortably, as he always did whenever someone looked into his eyes for too long. Then he raised the book in his hand as a distraction. “Have you see Eddie?”

  Dóma blushed to have been caught staring. She looked at the book: Byron. But of course. If Eddie was obsessed with Frost, so Drae was with the most notorious of the romantic poets. She shook her head. “He’s probably in the forest somewhere, scribbling sonnets that no one will ever read.”

  Drae turned the book between his hands, smiling softly. “I’ve read a few.”

  Dóma blinked. “He let you?” There was a fair dose of hurt mixed in with her shock. While it made sense that Eddie would have asked a fellow poet-lover to read his efforts, she was his best friend. He’d never even offered her the chance.

  Drae’s eyes danced with mischief. “I was lecturing him about Yeats and the First World War poets at the time. I think he acted in self-defence.”

  She laughed, because he expected her to, but the hurt remained.

  As if realising he’d said something to upset her, Drae tapped the book against his open palm. “Well, if you see him, can you tell him I’m looking for him?”

  “Of course,” she assured him, summoning up a smile. After all, it wasn’t Drae’s fault that Eddie trusted him and not her with his poetry. “Here, you might as well take another macaroon. Just to even the plate up.”

  “Anything for aesthetics.” Grinning, Drae saluted her with his newly-claimed biscuit before jogging away down the stairs.

  Gripping the tray firmly between her hands, Dóma gathered up the fresh hurt over Eddie and let it go with a determined sigh. Now was not the time to dwell on it; she had other things on her mind. Freyda would be waiting.

  As swiftly as that her hurt faded under a wave of nerves. Reaching the top of the stairs, she paused before a gilt-edged mirror and put the tray on the floor. Then she used her reflection to check her hair. It was ridiculous, she laughed at herself, pressing a hand against her belly. The mere thought of Freyda was enough to make giddy butterflies dance about inside of her.

  Memories of yesterday morning flooded her with nerves, but she also felt happy – and scared. Really, really scared. But mostly happy.

  It was so strange, yet wonderful at the same time. During all her years in the Shadow Garden, Dóma had always been one of the most even-tempered Aekhartain. She was the sweet one, the nice one, the kind one.

  Her life had been pleasant and gentle, ambling along with a general air of contentment. Yet ever since Freyda’s arrival her emotions had been tumbling about in a messy jumble. Her whole life had been turned upside down, but she knew Freyda had no idea that she’d done it.

  Dóma had never been attracted to a girl before. Actually, she’d never been attracted to anyone. Her lack of romantic attachments had been easy to blame on her Edwardian upbringing. Her life had been one of decorum and strict morals.

  Messy emotions and high drama weren’t anything she had ever been taught, so she’d thought that was why she’d never felt them. It just wasn’t in her, and she’d concluded that that sort of love was not for her.

  Oh, she had friends, good friends. Like Eddie. She loved Eddie. Just not like that.

  Perhaps if she’d known Eddie when she was alive, living in the world, he was the sort of man she would have been expected to marry. Would have happily married, and probably shared a life of easy contentment with. A thoroughly decent gentleman with whom she could live in perfect comfort, without any messy emotions getting in the way.

  “You’re babbling,” she grumbled, interrupting her ridiculous thoughts and grimacing at her reflection. Boring brown eyes, fair skin and an unforgivable amount of freckles scattered over her nose and round cheeks. She wasn’t beautiful and no amount of primping her dull brown hair would change that.

  Sighing, she picked up the tray; Freyda was waiting.

  Butterflies filled Dóma’s stomach again – giddy, nervous and scared, but mostly happy – as she walked the last few steps along the corridor and knocked on Freyda’s door. This new, fragile friendship was so precious to her, she hoped Freyda would never know how she really felt. The last thing she wanted to do was frighten her away.

  Holding the tray firmly, as if such a puny shield could hold her tumbling emotions at bay, Dóma took a deep breath and waited for the door to open.

  DÓMA WAS LATE. Freyda tried not to pace, or fidget, or look so bloody obvious about it all, but she didn’t know what to do with herself. Was Dóma coming or not? She’d said she would, but perhaps she was just being polite. Maybe she was busy? Maybe she had better things to do with her day than share tea and biscuits with an ungrateful girl, who’d forgotten to say thank you for the lovely light-catchers.

  Reminding herself to do that first thing, Freyda sat down on the only
chair not piled up with junk, but within seconds started tapping her feet – to the tick of a clock that wasn’t there. The Shadow Garden didn’t even have clocks. Time had no meaning here. Yet Dóma was late; Freyda could feel it.

  “Get a grip,” she scolded herself as she started pacing again. They hadn’t even set a time. They’d just agreed to meet again sometime today. Freyda wasn’t even completely certain that this was today and not still part of yesterday. It was so hard to tell in the Garden.

  Her throbbing back wasn’t helping. The pain made her want to lie still and shut her eyes, but at the same time she was overflowing with restless energy. Now Dóma was late, and she didn’t know what to do with herself.

  All this fuss, and for what? A woman who had no idea how Freyda felt about her. Freyda had no idea how she felt about Dóma either. Seeking comfort, reassurance, something, her hand reached into the pocket of her jeans to rub against the amethyst heart. Surely it had to mean something when Dóma had hung it up with the rest, right next to the tiny blackbird.

  Surely it meant something to her, to hang such a thing up so close to a symbol of what Freyda was. It had to mean something.

  It was fast beginning to mean everything to Freyda.

  A knock. She turned, took a deep breath and crossed the room to open the door. Dóma stood smiling on the other side, a tray of biscuits and muffins in her hands, and suddenly everything felt right again.

  This time Freyda didn’t stare, she just smiled and stepped back, pushing the door invitingly wide. “Come in.”

  “AND THEN VAGABOND popped out of his hat, as though he’d been hiding there all along. Oh, Shaiel was so mad! It’s one thing that Vaga chose Ollie over him – which he’s never forgiven either of them for, by the way – but now he was mocking him too!” Dóma was laughing so hard she had to wipe the tears from her face.

  She could remember that day so clearly, even though it was back during her first year in the Shadow Garden, over a century ago. She wondered if there would be any such memories that Freyda would recall from this year, even a hundred or more into the future.

  Rubbing at her stomach, sore from all the laughing she’d done that morning, Dóma wiped away the last of her tears and smiled at Freyda.

  They were both sitting on the floor, having deemed the few chairs in the room lost to the book and junk piles, and neither of them quite dared to sit on the bed. But while Dóma was seated decorously with a straight back, her bent legs tucked neatly to one side, Freyda was slouched against the bed, an elbow propped against the mattress to support her head, her fingers tangled in her messy blonde hair. She was watching Dóma make a fool of herself with a smile.

  Dóma’s laughter faded and she felt herself start to blush under the soft look in Freyda’s eyes. It would be so easy to read what she most wanted to see there. So easy to see tenderness and caring, perhaps something more. It was probably amusement, perhaps a little affection, but oh, how Dóma wished it was love.

  If she was Alamé, Dóma couldn’t help thinking, she would probably shift forward onto her knees, perhaps place a hand casually on Freyda’s leg for balance, stretch forward those last few inches and kiss that smiling mouth. Claim that smile for her own.

  If she was Alamé, she would dare. She would know what to do, how to act. If she was Alamé, she would never need to fear rejection.

  But she wasn’t Alamé; she didn’t dare. She couldn’t have shifted forwards even if her life depended on it. Her upbringing held her back, her fear of rejection locked her muscles into place, her cowardice stiffened her spine.

  She forced herself to look away, even as her fingers twitched with the need to run her fingers through that long, blonde hair, to know what it felt like, to see if it was as silky as it looked. Her eyes landed on the empty plates, scattered with crumbs, and her coffee cup, which still contained the briefest trickle.

  Dóma picked it up and, for something to do, drained the bitter liquid with a barely restrained grimace. How she hated coffee, but it was a just penance for her foolish thoughts.

  Freyda straightened from her relaxed slouch and stretched her arms over her head with a groan, revealing a patch of bare stomach that had Dóma’s fingers tightening around the plain earthenware mug. Really, of all the times to suddenly feel such things, she scolded inwardly and forced herself to look away again. It was so unlike her; it made her feel completely off-balance.

  She was not a physical person. Touch, like taste, were lesser senses for her. Even sight and smell took second place to the all-important ability to hear. Yet now here she was, reduced to lascivious thoughts all based on sight, twisted up inside with the need to touch. To taste, to smell. Her eyes glided wonderingly across Freyda’s mouth, and she hunched her shoulders as she forced her eyes away again.

  “Would you like some more?” Freyda asked, oblivious to her companion’s degenerate thoughts.

  “Please,” Dóma replied before she could stop herself. Really, there was penance and there was punishment. But as Freyda turned around and stretched out for the coffee pot, her t-shirt riding up to reveal more pale skin, Dóma figured she deserved another cup at the least.

  FREYDA GROANED AS the coffee pot remained just beyond reach. Gritting her teeth against the protests of her much-abused back muscles, she stretched that little bit further, feeling the burn and wishing she’d just stood up like any sensible person.

  Then Dóma gasped, and Freyda cursed herself. Slumping in place, she shoved her t-shirt back down, tucking it firmly into her jeans and abandoning the coffee for the moment.

  Letting her hair fall across her face to shroud her eyes, she glanced back and saw that Dóma had a hand pressed to her lips.

  “Your back,” she whispered.

  Freyda would have liked to think the damage she’d done to herself the day before was responsible, but she knew better. No matter the strain and stress her flight had caused, there wouldn’t be the smallest bruise to show for it. Aekhartain healed quickly. She knew she should feel grateful for that.

  Instead she resented that newfound blessing, because what had caused Dóma’s eyes to widen and her voice to tighten with distress was a far older, far deeper pain. Back in the days when healing had been hard to come by.

  Smoothing her t-shirt down again, though she knew it was already covering everything it should, Freyda stood up and fetched the coffee pot. “It’s gone cold. Would you like me to fetch some more?”

  She could feel Dóma’s eyes roaming over her face, searching for something, anything to explain what she’d just seen. But Freyda couldn’t look at her, couldn’t bear to see the thoughts flashing across her expression: disgust, pity, revulsion, compassion. She didn’t need any of it. She couldn’t accept any of it.

  “I’ll get us some more,” she decided, but Dóma grabbed her wrist before she could flee.

  “Show me,” Dóma whispered, cool fingers already reaching around to lift the t-shirt.

  Freyda shook herself free and pushed that hand away, her skin twitching from the unfamiliar sensation of touch. She wanted more of it, but dreaded what it would reveal.

  “They’re just burns,” she said sharply, and then the words tumbled out as if she’d been holding them back for too long. “Professor Cochran called them Pain Tests. He wanted to see how much damage I could resist before my imagination failed. Breaking my bones didn’t really work, since I wasn’t too good at imagining that away, but the hot pokers on my back were quite a success.”

  “Freyda,” Dóma whispered, sounding horrified and heart broken. “You don’t –”

  Freyda shook her head hard, not wanting to hear the pity, not needing it. Nor did she want to be told to stop. Dóma had wanted to see, she’d wanted to know. So Freyda would tell her. She’d started, so she had to finish.

  “It was my fault, you see. Oh, not that my mind wasn’t strong enough to protect me, he never really expected that. No, the Pain Tests happened whenever he grew frustrated at our lack of progress. They were my p
unishment for not playing along. He so hated it that I wouldn’t play along.”

  “How – how old were you?”

  Freyda held up her left hand to show her crooked little finger, then saw how much she was shaking, so balled it into a fist. “He broke my finger three months after I arrived at the Institute. It was an accident the first time,” she said flatly, trying to drain all the memories and emotions away, to shove them back into the box where she’d kept them for so long. “He had to stop when I was fourteen. One of the other scientists noticed that I was limping. They grew suspicious. Professor Cochran was worried someone might send me away. Restrict his access. End his vital research. So he stopped.”

  She stared at the door, waiting for Dóma to say something, anything. All she heard was a low sob. When she tried to clench her right hand she realised she was still holding the coffee pot.

  “This is cold. I’ll get some more,” she announced, and fled the room like the coward she was.

  Everything had been going so well, they’d been having such a nice time. She should have known something would spoil it. That she would ruin it. So she ran away, secretly hoping that Dóma would be gone by the time she returned.

  Because if she wasn’t, then they would have to talk about what she’d just said, and Dóma wouldn’t look at her the same way anymore. She wouldn’t see Freyda as she was now, Freyda the Aekhartain, the one with the creative imagination. The free woman with wings of her own, to take her wherever she wanted to go. Her friend, her —

  She sighed. No, all Dóma would see was the little girl left to fend for herself amongst the uncaring scientists of the Institute. She would pity her, probably cry for her, feel so damn sorry for the pathetic little creature she’d been.

  Freyda didn’t want that. She wanted Dóma to see her. The woman she was now. Not a child, or a survivor, or anything but Freyda. The free Freyda, the new Freyda. This Freyda.

  She didn’t want pity – she wanted to be loved. By Dóma.

  And that terrified her more than any pity or revulsion over the scars that marred her back. So she dumped the cold coffee pot on the first flat surface she came to, burst out into the twilight and called for Carroll.

  Once the blackbird landed on her outstretched hand, she imagined empty rocks, barren sands and endless skies, surrounded by perfect silence.

  Her wings flowed into being to wrap tightly around them both, and within heartbeats she was in the middle of the Gobi desert, falling to her knees and crying into the dusty ground. For what she’d faced, and what she couldn’t face. For what she’d never had and didn’t dare dream of having.

  For what she could have had, and what she’d just lost.

  Eight

  DÓMA MARCHED DETERMINEDLY through the Shadow Garden. Her chin was high, her strides firm, her skirts swishing around her ankles. She tried not to be angry, she knew she had no right to be hurt, but really, enough was enough. Three days.

  Three whole days!

  Every muscle was clenched tight, including her fists as they swung by her sides. Unusually for her, no one approached her as she walked. No birds came twittering up to her, encouraging her to sing with them. No Aekhartain matched strides to have a quick chat. Not even Symphony accompanied her, preferring to fly on ahead at a safe distance.

  For once, possibly for the first time in her entire existence, there was no song inside of her. No hum on her lips, no whistle beneath her breath, no lyrics or melodies running through her mind. She was utterly quiet.

  And quite, quite furious.

  Following the path through the birch copse, she picked her way through the delicate saplings and nodded absently at the huge raven perched on watch. Orion nodded back, burbling a soft greeting to Symphony as the song thrush darted to the protection of the great corvid’s side.

  Dóma ignored them both, her eyes darting along the unnerving length of emptiness. She’d never been to the edge of the Shadow Garden before. Just knowing that it existed was enough to keep her away. She’d never been a brave person.

  Taking a deep breath, she stepped closer now. She was too angry to be afraid today.

  “Where is she?” she demanded of the black-clad figure, crouched too close to the edge.

  Maskai lifted her hands, stroking the silver sapling that leapt upwards, then slowly stood. She turned as she rose, her face hidden behind the silky feathers of her mask. Deep blue eyes studied Dóma from the shadows.

  “She left,” Dóma said, not knowing until this moment that she’d hoped Freyda would be here. Had wanted her to be here, needed her to be here. It was one thing to leave Dóma alone in her room, to flee from her without a word, but quite another to have abandoned the entire Garden.

  For three days.

  “She didn’t say anything, she just went.”

  Stepping away from the edge, Maskai opened her arms and Dóma darted into the Entity’s protective embrace. Warmth and darkness enclosed her, and she felt the secure weight of Maskai’s black wings closing around her. Holding her, comforting her, protecting her from harm.

  “She is not like you, nalamamh,” Maskai murmured gently. “She needs more time. You expect too much, too soon.”

  “I didn’t say anything. I wouldn’t have said anything. She could have come back, she could have talked to me. Or not. I wouldn’t have minded.”

  At that Maskai pulled back enough to slip a finger beneath Dóma’s chin, forcing her to meet the Entity’s all-knowing eyes. “Would you not?”

  Dóma bit her lip and shook her head, before burrowing into Maskai’s arms again. “I just want her to come back. I didn’t mean to make her run.”

  Sighing, Maskai cuddled her close. “She will probably always run,” she warned. “It is part of her now. She has been cooped up too much all her life. There will be times when she feels overwhelmed and trapped, and the only way she can cope is to flee.”

  Dóma nodded her understanding, knowing it would hurt every time Freyda left her behind, but she would learn to deal with it. She would learn to cope. After all, when she felt overwhelmed, she locked herself in her music room and played Brahms and Grieg on her piano, very, very loudly. “I won’t make her stay,” she whispered, trying to believe it.

  Maskai chuckled softly. “You would have more luck caging the wind, miuskahm.”

  “Then what do I do?” Dóma asked, pulling away so she could see the Entity’s face, even half-hidden beneath her mask. “Is this all I can ever hope to have? Must I settle for so little?”

  “No.” Maskai touched a cool, shadow-tinted hand to her cheek. “Never settle, Dóma, for anything less than your heart demands. She will come back. Her heart will bring her back to you. All you can do is be there for her, as much as you possibly can.”

  Dóma sniffed, pulling back her tears, unsure if she could do what Maskai suggested. She already wanted more, already knew she would need more. But if it came down to a choice between Maskai’s words and losing Freyda forever, she would learn to adjust. “I’ll try.”

  “Good girl.” Maskai pressed an affectionate kiss against her forehead and wiped away an errant tear. “I told Aeafreyda that she must be brave in love, I can ask no less of you. Be strong, Dóma, and brave. She will need you.”

  “But what if I need her?” Dóma asked, her voice cracking on the last word, feeling more tears building in her chest. She knew it was selfish, but it was also true.

  “Be brave,” Maskai said again. “Love is unpredictable, and it hurts as often as it heals, but the rewards are worth it. Aeafreyda is worth it.”

  And because she knew it was true, Dóma bit back her tears and protests and nodded.

  “Dry your eyes, miuskahm, my Star has something to show you.” Pulling back her wings, Maskai stepped back and revealed Shaiel watching them both. Dóma hadn’t even known anyone else was nearby.

  He smiled at her surprise and extended a hand, Symphony perched on one shoulder, a magpie on the other, his own magnificent wings folded at his back. “Come with me,
Songbird, we’re going for a walk.”

  FREYDA RAN. She’d spent the last three days flittering from place to place, searching for something, anything, to ease the ache inside of her. Nothing had. Nothing would.

  Breathless, her lungs screaming, Freyda paused to bend over, to gasp in some much-needed oxygen. Shaking her legs out, she walked to a nearby stream and crouched for a drink. Carroll darted onto her shoulder, puffing from his relentless flight.

  Splashing her face with ice-cold water, Freyda looked around at the stark, empty landscape. The arctic tundra was a barren place. It suited her mood.

  She knew she had to go back, back to the Shadow Garden, back to Maskai’s understanding eyes, back to Alamé’s ill-disguised threats and censure. Back to Emin’s wonderful baking, Ollie’s silly jokes, Nel’s sweet laughter. Back to Demero’s brotherly hugs, Fara’s kind smiles and Drae’s easy lessons in the art of poetry.

  Back to Dóma. To her smiles, her songs, her blushing glances when she was caught staring. Back to her company, her generosity and compassion. Back to the pity Freyda knew would come, but simply couldn’t face. Back to the Shadow Garden, back home.

  But not yet.

  Standing up, Freyda lifted Carroll gently from her shoulder and urged him back into the sky. Then she started to run again. Sprinting across the miles to nowhere, fleeing from the history that was written on her skin.

  Pushing harder, she tightened her hands into fists, put her head down and increased her speed. When her wings unfurled across her back, she didn’t think, didn’t hesitate, just opened them up and, as the ground dropped away beneath her feet, she thrust them down hard and took to the open, empty sky.

  IT WAS THE light Dóma noticed first; piercingly bright after the soothing dark of the Shadow Garden. Then came the cold, a gnawing, biting ache that sank straight through her skin to settle inside her bones. Symphony huddled right up against her neck, a tiny ball of fluffed-up, trembling feathers; the one warm spot against her rapidly cooling skin.

  As Shaiel furled his wings and stepped back to look around, Dóma wrapped her arms around herself and rubbed. Not ten seconds here and already she was shivering, her teeth starting to chatter.

  “Whuh-where are we?”

  Turning back to her, Shaiel resettled his wings against his back and summoned up a cloak from nowhere. “Siberia,” he replied, throwing the heavy wool around her shoulders and giving her a warming rub. “Sorry. If I’d known where we were headed, I would have let you get changed first. She was in Australia’s Red Centre yesterday.”

  “It’s-s f-f-f-fine,” she assured him, cocooning herself in the cloak and burrowing amongst its folds. Then the rest of his words sank into her cold brain. She. Shaking back her hair, Dóma looked around at the barren emptiness of scrubby brown grasslands and winding silver rivers.

  “Where is she?” The whisper came from her suddenly pounding heart, creating hopeful clouds across her lips.

  Shaiel smiled and tipped his head back. “Look up.”

  Dóma did, and the bright, endlessly pale-grey sky brought tears to her eyes. Just like the slender, black-winged figure soaring above her. “She’s flying.”

  “Yes,” Shaiel agreed softly. “She is.”

  “Oh.” If she’d known how to fly, Dóma wasn’t certain she’d have come back to the Shadow Garden either. Not when the world was full of so much space, so much sky, so much freedom. “Oh.”

  “It’ll probably be a while before she comes down,” Shaiel said, holding up his hand and grinning as a blackbird darted in to land on his fingers. Carroll piped a greeting, before hopping onto Shaiel’s shoulder and huddling into the warm space between the man’s neck and his wings.

  Absently stroking the little bird, Shaiel glanced at Dóma and smiled. “Shall we walk?”

  SOARING THROUGH THE endless skies, Freyda closed her eyes and let the emptiness fill her up. There was nothing here but her. Even Carroll had abandoned her. For the moment everything was empty and perfect. There was nothing, she felt nothing, she was nothing.

  Freyda spread her wings and arms out wide and let herself tip. Keeping her eyes closed, she still felt the moment when gravity reached out to reclaim her.

  Suddenly she was falling, and for the first time in three days she felt something again. Something real, something fierce, something more than pain and confusion.

  Fear and sheer joy collided inside of her and Freyda opened her eyes, whooping as the world rushed up to meet her through a swirling cloud of her own tangled hair.

  Far below, but getting closer with every pounding heartbeat, two figures stood in the wilderness, looking up, looking at her. Watching her fall.

  Freyda’s wings flared open with shock, and she fled back up to the skies. Her feet might not be on the ground, but she was still running. Running any way she could.

  Away from Shaiel and his pesky magpies, tracking her subtly wherever she tried to go. And far, far away from the gasp of horror that had escaped the hand pressed tightly over Dóma’s lips.

  She shouldn’t have seen it, should never have heard it, but Freyda had felt that gasp like a kick to the chest.

  “Damn, damn, damn, damn,” she cursed herself, beating her wings hard with every word, feeling the pain shoot through her muscles and welcoming it. She deserved every last ache for frightening Dóma like that, and for running away from her again.

  Yet there was nothing in the world that could make her go back.

  AS FREYDA’S WINGS opened, pulling her out of her terrifying tumble, Dóma could only watch as the woman she loved flew away from her. Fleeing again.

  The hand she’d pressed against her lips to stifle her scream, slid down to press against her pounding heart. “I thought she was falling,” she whispered, shaking as much as poor shivering Symphony on her shoulder. “I thought she was going to die.”

  “She’s fine,” Shaiel soothed, putting a comforting arm around her shoulders. “She was skylarking, that’s all.” He frowned at the distant speck that had so recently been tumbling towards them. “Shame that she spotted us right then, but at least she knows we’re here now.”

  Dóma shrugged him off, suddenly hating that she was the one everyone always tried to comfort. As if she was fragile, as if she was weak. While Freyda ran away, independent, strong, always standing alone. “And she was so happy to see us that she’s flown into the next country.”

  Shaiel’s lips twitched, but he kindly didn’t remind her of just how big Russia was, or how far it was to the nearest border. Dóma didn’t even know which direction she was facing, or what the next country was.

  Hunching deeper into her cloak, she ducked her head and scuffed her boots in the squelching mud. The grass looked tough and wiry. She wondered why it bothered scratching out an existence in such a desolate place. What could possibly be the point?

  “Where there’s life, there’s hope,” Shaiel murmured, making her realise she’d been thinking out loud.

  Dóma frowned and it was her turn to look up at the sky, at the distant point where Freyda had started soaring again. Far away, but not completely out of sight. A small detail, but it felt significant. “And where there isn’t life anymore?”

  “Is your heart beating, Dóma?”

  She looked at Shaiel. He raised an eyebrow and tapped a hand against his chest. “Well? Is it?”

  Reaching through the bundled layers of her cloak, she flattened her cold fingers against her chest and felt the reassuring thump beneath her breast bone. “Yes.”

  “Then there’s life,” he said, pressing a gentle hand against her cheek and tipping her face up to meet his bright blue eyes. “And does it beat for her?”

  Dóma bit her lip. “Yes.”

  “Then there’s hope,” he said, smiling and lifting Carroll from his shoulder. Handing her the blackbird, he unfurled his wings. “Keep the cloak.” With a wink, he wrapped his wings about himself and his magpie, and the pair of them faded from sight.

  “What? Wait!” D
óma leapt forward, reaching desperately for Shaiel’s arm. Too late. Her other hand tightened around poor Carroll until the blackbird shrieked a protest. “You can’t leave me here!”

  But he already had.

  Her whole body drooping where she stood, Dóma knew she was stuck. Apologising softly to Carroll, she tucked him and Symphony into the warmth of her cloak and looked up. Freyda was flying loops in the distance, a little closer now, apparently enjoying herself and her freedom.

  “Well, tough,” Dóma muttered, deciding it was high time the two of them talked. Especially as it was the only way she was likely to get back to the Shadow Garden anytime soon. Not all Aekhartain could cross the realms as easily as breathing. Cursing Shaiel for remembering that when she hadn’t, she clutched her cloak more tightly about herself and her songbirds, and began trudging across the barren wasteland.

  “Let’s walk, he says,” she grumbled bitterly as she stumped along. “Ha! Keep the cloak. How generous! When I get my hands on him, he’ll wish he’d let me freeze.”

  IT WASN’T WORKING. No matter how many loop-the-loops Freyda made, how many spirals and death-defying swoops, flying wasn’t fun anymore. She tried soaring higher and higher, until it became hard to breathe and the air felt too thin to hold her. She searched for that same emptiness she’d been losing herself in for days, but it was gone. She couldn’t find it anymore. Her mind was too busy.

  Admitting defeat, she sighed and glided back over the tundra, searching for the two figures she’d run so cowardly away from.

  There was only one left now, slogging doggedly across the difficult ground below. As her way was blocked by yet another meandering waterway, Freyda saw Dóma stamp her foot in the squelching mud. No doubt if she was closer she’d probably hear a very unladylike curse or two pass those very proper lips.

  The thought made her laugh, her spirits buoyant for the first time in too many days. Suddenly it was no hardship to land again, to plant her feet on the sodden earth and smile into Dóma’s beautiful brown eyes.

  Those same eyes narrowed. “Where have you been?” Dóma growled, sounding so unlike herself Freyda could only blink. “I’ve been walking across this damn bog for hours, my shoes are ruined, I probably have trench foot, and I will never get the mud out of this dress! Which was one of my favourites!”

  “Er…” The furious outburst was so unexpected coming from Dóma that Freyda stepped back. Her hands lifted automatically as Carroll gave a worried peep and darted out from beneath Dóma’s cloak. Apparently he wanted to get to a safe distance too. “I didn’t ask you come. Why didn’t you leave with Shaiel?”

  Throwing up her hands, Dóma tipped her head back to the sky and let out the scream of a woman pushed beyond all bounds of endurance.

  “Umm.” Freyda shuffled from foot to foot, not knowing what to do or how to handle this. She’d thought she known what to expect from Dóma, but this was definitely outside the realms of her – admittedly pretty narrow – experience. “Would you like me to take you home?”

  Dóma glared at her, then after a long, sizzling moment, held out a hand. A red, shaking, muddy hand.

  Freyda stepped closer and accepted it cautiously, half-expecting Dóma to hit her with the other. She looked so angry. Instead Freyda gasped at the chill when their palms connected. “You’re freezing!”

  Dóma’s eyes narrowed. “We’re in Siberia.” Her voice was as icy as her hand.

  Freyda cast a worried look over her and frowned. “You’re really not dressed for it. What were you thinking?”

  “Freyda?” Dóma said, voice tight, teeth clenched; it was a wonder she could get the words out between them without breaking her jaw.

  “Yes?”

  “Take. Me. Home.”

  Unwilling to risk any further outbursts, Freyda pulled Dóma into her arms and wrapped her wings tightly around them both. She’d never transported another person before, but the feel of Dóma in her arms – even freezing cold and rigid with anger – felt so right it was as easy as moving herself.

  Putting her arms around Dóma’s back, she allowed herself the brief luxury of resting her cheek against her hair. She breathed in the scent of wildflowers, overlaid with the clear tundra air. Dóma felt so soft, so perfect. It was the easiest thing in all the worlds to imagine them both home.

  While Freyda could have stayed like that, wrapped inside her wings, deeply entwined forever, Dóma clearly had other ideas. Wrenching herself violently from Freyda’s hold, she stumbled around in a circle and marched – well, squelched – firmly away.

  “Dóma!” Freyda called, running after her. “Hey, Dóma, wait!”

  For someone so small, Dóma could move surprisingly quickly when she wanted to. Freyda found it hard to keep up. Eventually she got close enough to put a hand on the other woman’s shoulder.

  Dóma shook her off so hard she actually spun herself around.

  The look on her face stopped Freyda in her tracks. Every muscle locked in place, her lungs seized and her heart skipped.

  Dóma was crying.

  “I –”

  “Don’t!” Dóma snarled, scrubbing her hands hard across her face. “Don’t say anything. Don’t you dare. Just leave me alone. Go on, run away! You’re good at that.”

  “Dóma,” Freyda whispered, stunned and sorry, reaching out a hand, wanting only to comfort her, to take that look off her face. She looked so hurt, so angry and broken. Guilt jabbed Freyda’s chest, as painful as the look in Dóma’s eyes.

  “No!” Dóma slapped her hand away. “I can’t – You – Just leave me alone!”

  This time it was Dóma who ran away. Freyda could only watch her go, learning the hard way how much it hurt to be the one left behind.

  Nine

  “DO YOU KNOW where Eddie is?”

  When Maskai looked up from tending the newest saplings at the edge of the Garden, Freyda braced herself for what she might see on that masked face. But there was no judgement, no annoyance, no disappointment or anger. No demands to know where she’d been, why she hadn’t come or sent word, no recriminations for leaving Maskai in the lurch when it was Freyda’s job to help her.

  Instead the Entity smiled and went back to tending one of the rosebushes Freyda had created so few days ago. It felt like a different lifetime. She’d been happy then.

  “Of course,” Maskai murmured, answering the question. Then she frowned down at the rose. It didn’t look very well.

  In fact, as Freyda looked at all the flowering plants she’d created in her joy, she realised they were all suffering. Nothing had died yet, but it probably wouldn’t be long.

  Good. She couldn’t bear to look at them. “Can you tell me where I can find him?”

  Maskai looked up again, and this time there was something on her serene face. Pity. “She isn’t with him.”

  “I know,” Freyda said impatiently, though she hadn’t known any such thing. She’d only hoped. No one in the Shadow Garden would tell her where Dóma was or where she lived. Half of the Aekhartain weren’t even talking to her.

  That was why she needed to find Eddie. He was Dóma’s best friend. If he cared for Dóma at all, he would know what Freyda had to do to make things right. He would tell her what she had to do to make things better for Dóma. Even if he told her to leave the Shadow Garden and never come back, then at least Freyda would know it was the right thing to do.

  She wanted so badly to run, her whole body jittered with it, but she couldn’t. Not this time. Not unless she wanted to lose Dóma forever.

  “You have to fix this yourself,” Maskai told her gently. “You can’t rely on the others to do it for you.”

  “I thought you didn’t give advice.”

  The Entity didn’t take offence at her sharp tone; she merely smiled. “He’s in the dell, in the big, sprawling oak. Do you know where that is?”

  “Yes.” No, but she would find it. However long it took.

  Maskai looked at her again, but this time there was no expressi
on visible beneath her mask. “Orion will show you,” she said, waving for her raven to join them. When the enormous black bird did, the Entity bent back over the roses.

  Taking it as a dismissal, Freyda turned and followed the raven through the birch copse and into the twilight.

  THERE WAS NO music. Dóma lay on her back in the middle of her music room, staring at the wilting flowers on top of the piano, and blinked back the tears.

  She wouldn’t cry anymore. Not over the flowers, not over the lost music, not over Freyda.

  First she had been angry, so very, very angry that it had crushed the music inside her. All she’d felt then was the drumbeat of her fury. But that had faded, leaving only hurt, and with the hurt came silence.

  She was done with emotion. It was too much. She didn’t want to feel anything anymore. She just wanted her music back. But when she closed her eyes and willed the melodies to return, her mind filled with emptiness. With hurt. With silence.

  Moisture beaded against her fluttering lashes and a tear stole down her cheek. Rolling into a ball on the floor, Dóma sobbed for everything she’d lost, and the unruly heart that had broken everything inside of her.

  FOR SUCH A big bird, Orion certainly flew slowly when he wanted to. More than once Freyda found herself outpacing the raven, and having to wait impatiently for him to glide alongside her once more. Truly, it should have been impossible for him to maintain such a pathetic speed and remain in the air. Surely he was too heavy.

  Tapping her toes while she waited again for Orion to show her the way, Freyda took the chance to look around. She’d rarely spent much time in this part of the Garden. The wood was old, deep and overgrown in the way of old fairytales and storybooks. It was an alien world to Freyda and she wasn’t entirely comfortable in it.

  These trees did not grow straight and true like the birches at the edge of the Shadow Garden. No, here they were gnarled and twisted, bent and entwined, and everywhere their bark was covered in soft mosses, strange fungi and the other little growths that ancient woodlands picked up over their long centuries.

  It was probably really pretty, but Freyda was in no mood to appreciate it. Until she saw a moth that was as large as her hand, its folded cinnamon wings almost heart-shaped, with a light cream band halfway along. Its long antennae looked feathery soft.

  For a moment, as she watched it crawling along a knobbly oak branch, Freyda felt the wonder of discovery stir inside her again. Staring at the beautiful creature before her, she almost forgot where she was, what she was doing, why she was doing it.

  Then Orion swept in front of her face, close enough for his feathers to brush her cheek.

  Jumping back, she scowled at the raven and turned to follow him once more. She hoped they found Eddie soon. As little as she was looking forward to talking to him and laying herself bare to his accusations and disapproving silence, right now she would gladly do anything if it meant she didn’t have to spend one more minute with this torturously slow bird.

  As Orion glided gracefully between the trees, Freyda found her own route less easy going, and for the first time it was hard to keep pace with him. Cursing beneath her breath, she scrabbled and scrambled over concealed roots, determined not to ask Orion to wait.

  She’d asked several times for the raven to speed up and he’d ignored her, so she expected the outcome would be no different if she requested the opposite. She certainly wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of finding out.

  Fighting her way free of a persistent bramble, Freyda stumbled over another cunningly disguised root and staggered down a small slope.

  Crronk! Crronk! Crronk!

  Orion’s raucous call echoed through the otherwise silent woodland. Freyda had no idea what it meant, she just hoped it wasn’t a comment on her clumsiness. She was starting to understand why Maskai wore a raven mask. Perhaps the Entity had once had two ravens, until she went walking with one.

  Crronk! Crronk! Crronk!

  Orion had settled in the branches of a wide-spreading oak, the feathers at his throat swelling outwards with his calls.

  Freyda didn’t bother complaining about the halt, instead she rested a hand against the bulbous oak’s trunk and flexed each ankle in turn. Nothing broken, nothing strained, but she would probably feel the awkward angles they’d been forced to turn tomorrow.

  Crronk! Crronk! Crronk!

  “All right, all right, there’s no need to make such a fuss. What are you doing here, Orion?”

  Freyda looked up, trying to locate the speaker. There he was – Eddie – half-concealed in the sprawling branches of the very same oak she was leaning against. He was smiling at the raven, a book in one hand as he supported himself against a branch with the other.

  Freyda hadn’t really had much to do with Eddie during her time in the Shadow Garden. He was perfectly nice to her whenever their paths crossed, but he preferred solitude to the cheerful, sometimes stifling company of the other Aekhartain. Freyda couldn’t blame him.

  “Well? Am I wanted for something?” Eddie asked the raven, putting his book aside and pulling something from his pocket. Edging a little further along the sturdy branch, he offered the titbit to the bird. “Or is this just a social call?”

  Orion shuffled closer and gobbled the treat in one greedy swallow. Then he swooped off his perch, skimming low over Freyda’s head. Caught by surprise, she only just ducked in time.

  Crronk! Crronk! Crronk!

  Oh, he was definitely laughing at her now. He would be in so much trouble the next time they met.

  Crronk! Crronk! Crronk!

  The self-satisfied call faded swiftly away as the raven left the wood far more swiftly than he’d bothered to enter it. But Freyda soon forgot all about the raven as she looked up and found herself under intense scrutiny.

  Eddie wasn’t easy to see in the woodland twilight, his black hair, dark skin and deep brown eyes fading easily into the shadows that seemed to curl around him. It brought to mind something Dóma had once said about him: he was one acquainted with the night.

  He stared at her so long that Freyda filled up with restless, twitching energy. She wanted to fidget, desperately, but dreaded breaking that silent moment, heavy with the weight of something. She knew he was judging her, from up there in his eyrie, but she didn’t care. Just so long as he would speak to her.

  The longer the silence stretched on, the more she expected him to simply turn away. To dismiss her without a hearing. He was Dóma’s best friend; why would he care about anything she had to say? Why should he give her a chance?

  “You made her cry.”

  Freyda swallowed hard and nodded.

  Eddie stared at her for another long moment, before sighing and moving out of sight. “You’d best come up.”

  Easing out her breath in a long, unsteady sigh, Freyda didn’t wait for him to change his mind. Reaching for the lowest branch, she took a firm hold and swung her legs up.

  At least she tried to. Apparently, despite all the fitness training she’d done at the Institute and all the flying and running she’d done in recent days, she had the upper body strength of a small mouse. What a time to discover it.

  Planting her feet back on the ground, Freyda jogged in place, shaking some of her excess energy out through her fingertips while she imagined stronger, better muscles winding around her upper arms and shoulders. She strengthened the tendons in her wrists and elbows, then took a deep breath and tried again.

  This time it was easy, and she scrambled up the tree as if she’d been doing such things her whole life. It was only as her feet gripped the rough bark and slipped against the cool moss that Freyda realised she had no shoes on. She hadn’t worn any for days.

  Shrugging the observation off to be dealt with later, she finally reached the branch Orion had used for a perch. Carroll was waiting for her there and hopped onto her shoulder as Freyda crawled towards the centre of the tree.

  Eddie sat watching her, legs crossed, a book bag lying beside him,
his arms folded firmly across his chest. Now that she was closer she could see no friendliness in those usually kind eyes. His lips were set in an uncompromising line, his eyebrows raised imperiously high. “Well?”

  Freyda stopped on the branch, knowing he would never invite her inside the hollow. Everything about his body language shouted that she was not welcome here. Everything about the cosy little cup between the oak’s spreading branches said this was a favourite place, a special place. So she let her legs dangle either side of the branch, knowing better than to intrude any further.

  Then she took a deep breath and summoned her courage. She was about to do something she’d done rarely in her life. Something she hated doing. Something that felt utterly alien. Yet if she wanted to make things right with Dóma, if she wanted to at least try to win her back, she had to do this.

  So she looked Eddie firmly in his untrusting eyes and said, “I need your help.”

  The other Aekhartain tipped his head minutely to one side, silently bidding her to continue.

  Reluctance tightened like a collar around her throat, but Freyda forced herself to speak past the constriction of her foolish pride. “I hurt Dóma. I didn’t mean to, but that doesn’t matter. I want to make it right. I want to apologise. But I don’t know how. Will you help me?”

  Her voice got quieter and quieter as she studied that implacable face for the smallest hint of softening, for the tiniest sign of acceptance.

  Nothing.

  “Why should I help you? I don’t even know you.”

  Knowing she’d said such things herself in the past, Freyda managed not to flinch against the sting. It just reminded her once again that she was still new here, still an outsider.

  No matter how much she’d wanted to make the Shadow Garden her home, it wasn’t. Not yet. When it all came down to it she was not as important to the residents as Dóma was.

  Which was as it should be. Dóma was a lovely person. Freyda, well, she wasn’t.

  “I’m not asking you for me,” she replied, forcing herself to remain calm when what she really wanted to do was lash out defensively. And run. She shook her head hard: no more running. “I’m asking for Dóma. I need to make this right for her.”

  “And for yourself?” Eddie asked sceptically.

  Freyda forced herself to shrug as if it didn’t matter. As if she didn’t care what happened to her. Yes, secretly, she hoped that by making things right she would win Dóma back, as a friend if nothing else. She also knew that she needed to make things right, whether Dóma forgave her or not.

  “This isn’t about me. It’s about her. I didn’t mean to hurt her, but I did, so it’s up to me to put things right.” She looked at Eddie again, forcing herself to meet his eye and admit, “But I don’t know how. You’re her best friend. You know – you know her better than I do.” And oh, how that admission hurt. “Will you help me?”

  There, at last, the slightest softening in his gaze, as one corner of his mouth curled up in the smallest smile. “All right,” he conceded. “I’ll help. What’s your singing voice like?”

  Freyda blinked at him, stunned that he’d agreed to help. It was what she’d most wanted, but had never truly expected to hear. Then the rest of his words seeped through to her brain. “I can’t,” she blurted. “No one’s ever taught me how to sing. I’ve never even whistled in my life.”

  “Then learn,” he ordered, the sternness returning to his expression. “You made her cry. You took the music away from her. It’s up to you to bring it back.”

  Even though the thought of singing made Freyda’s insides twist into a shrivelled knot, she nodded. Dóma was music, she was Song. The sun turning backwards and the moon falling from the sky would seem more right than a silent Dóma. There was no way in all the worlds that Freyda would want to take the music away from her. So if it was up to her to give it back, then that’s what she would do. Whatever it took.

  Swallowing down her fear, her nerves and pride, she lifted her chin and nodded firmly. “Where do I start?”

  This time Eddie’s grin was bright and fully-fledged, as he pulled his bag strap onto his shoulder and edged out of his hollow. “We need to speak to Ally.”

  Freyda swung backwards, firstly to get out of his way, and secondly in rejection of that idea. “No. Alamé hates me. She won’t help.”

  “Ally loves Dóma,” Eddie corrected her, swinging out of the tree with practised ease. When he reached the ground, he looked back up at her, his teeth flashing in a grin. “And she’ll enjoy this.”

  “Great,” Freyda grumbled, making her way cautiously down to the ground. She’d said she’d do anything to make things right with Dóma, but now she was having second thoughts. “What if I can’t sing?”

  Eddie did her the courtesy of not dismissing her very real fears. He smiled grimly as he walked across the grove to scoop up the most peculiar-looking bird from where it was incredibly well camouflaged in the undergrowth. “You’ll learn,” he told her, tucking the bird beneath his arm.

  It blinked sleepy little eyes at Freyda from beside its oddly tiny beak. Then it yawned, revealing a gaping mouth that a blue whale would have been proud of.

  Freyda could only blink.

  “Let’s go find Ally,” Eddie said, and this time Freyda couldn’t find any words to stop him.

  Ten

  “I DON’T THINK this is a good idea,” Freyda muttered, as she walked through the woods early the next day. Her stomach was a mass of churning butterflies. She felt shaky with nerves, wobbly with nausea and like she wanted to flee at any moment.

  Walking up ahead with Eddie, Alamé tossed her fiery curls over one shoulder and turned to walk backwards. “It’s a great idea.”

  “No,” Freyda argued, shaking her head. “It’s a terrible idea. This is going to be a disaster.”

  Alamé rolled her eyes and turned back around.

  “It will be fine,” Fara murmured gently, walking beside Freyda with a violin case in her hand. “It’s a lovely idea. I think Dóma will really like it.”

  While that settled some of the sickness Freyda was feeling, and made her a little less inclined to run, she still wasn’t convinced. “I’m going to make a fool of myself.”

  No one said anything.

  Freyda scowled. “That was the cue for you all to bury me in meaningless reassurance.”

  Eddie shot her an apologetic glance over his shoulder. “Do you want us to lie to you?”

  She was tempted to say yes, even though she wouldn’t believe them. It would still be nice if at least one person didn’t think she was about to look like an idiot.

  “It’s the least she deserves,” Alamé growled.

  Freyda sighed. Thanks to Eddie she’d won Alamé’s assistance for this plan, but the other woman wasn’t on Freyda’s side yet.

  “Don’t look so worried,” Fara said, with a kind smile. “We’re all fools in love, isn’t that what Jane Austen said?”

  “Probably.” Freyda shrugged. She hadn’t read any Jane Austen, but it sounded convincingly romantic. “Why can’t I just read some poetry? Pretend to be Romeo, or recite some Byron?”

  “This isn’t just anyone we’re dealing with here.” Alamé turned around again, this time stopping and putting her hands on her hips. She was a good head shorter than Freyda, but the force of her personality far outweighed her size. As did the strength of her glower. “This is Dóma. You took away her music, Freyda. You will give it back to her, even if you have to sing every song ever written and get laughed and pointed at by every person in the known worlds. I don’t care how foolish you feel or how embarrassed you get, you will do this until Dóma hums, whistles or sings along, or so help me, I will roast you over a spit until you sing a very different tune. Has your imagination got that?”

  Freyda gave a sullen nod, able to imagine that scenario a little too clearly for her own comfort. Even now she could smell the far-off scent of burning hair, and feel a distant flame upon her skin.

  “G
ood.” Alamé gave her a ravishing smile. “It’s show time, Diva. Time to start your warm up.”

  DÓMA WAS LYING on the floor of her music room again. It was the place she felt safest, even if the unnatural quiet brought a fresh round of tears to her eyes.

  Symphony darted in and out of the open window, bringing in snails to tempt her vanished appetite. The latest offering was actually quite pretty, its delicate, violet shell patterned with silver swirls. A true masterpiece of Maskai’s attention to detail.

  But it was still a snail.

  “No, thank you,” she croaked, her throat raw and aching after all her tears. “You eat it.”

  Symphony cocked her head curiously, probably wondering how Dóma could deny herself such a treat. When she made no move to take the snail, however, the thrush eventually flicked her wings, snatched up her prize and darted back outside again.

  It wasn’t long before the sound of a tiny shell being repeatedly whacked against a stone drifted into the music room. Dóma sighed, hoping the snail tasted as pretty as it had looked.

  There was a crack outside, then Symphony gave a soft trill and flittered away into the surrounding woods.

  Dóma rolled onto her back and stared at the shadowy ceiling. In her head she could see ripples and flickers of white shimmering there, like the reflections from the light-catchers she’d hung up for Freyda not so long ago. That was the act that had started all of this, or at least brought it to a speedier conclusion.

  It had been a stupid thing to do, Dóma knew now. She’d pushed too hard, too fast, and had been justly burned for her impatience.

  If only the music would come back, she was sure she’d feel better. If only she could sing again, she could move on. Recover from this. She might even be able to make friends with Freyda. Nothing more, not now she’d blown her chance, but it would be nice to see her again, to make her smile, to give her muffins.

  She frowned at the shadows, wondering if anyone was making sure Freyda was eating properly. Was Emin still cooking for her? Was she getting her daily dose of chocolate? There were muffins in her kitchen cupboard: a gift from Eddie. She wondered if she might be able to convince him to take them to Freyda. She needed the chocolate so much more than Dóma did.

  A ripple of music drifted on the twilight air, like a bow drawn slowly over humming strings.

  Dóma wriggled around to get more comfortable and shut her eyes, straining all her senses for another taste of that fleeting music. Had it come from inside her? Was the music coming back? Her heart started to thump with hope.

  The strings hummed again, then slowly, hesitantly, someone began to play the violin. The melody was light and sounded familiar; Dóma frowned as she tried to remember it.

  And then a voice sang: “Blow the wind southerly, southerly, southerly,

  “Blow the wind south o’er the bonnie blue sea —”

  Dóma’s eyes flew open as surprise shot through her. It was a weak voice, reedy with a lack of confidence and no sign of training, tight with nerves and husky with embarrassment. Dóma blinked away fresh tears as the soft alto continued, starting to smooth out when no one laughed.

  “Blow the wind southerly, southerly, southerly,

  “Blow bonnie breeze, my lover to me.”

  It was a terrible rendition, lacking any real cohesion with the violin. The rhythm was off, the key wasn’t quite right, but, oh, it was the sweetest thing Dóma had ever heard.

  “They told me last night there were ships in the offing,

  “And I hurried down to the deep rolling sea —”

  It felt like her heart would soar out of her chest as that terrible, awkward, beautiful voice struggled to keep going, to remember the words, to keep in tune.

  “But my eye could not see it where might be it,

  “The barque that is bearing my lover to me.”

  As that voice finally cracked, stumbling to a halt, seeming to have run out of hope at last, Dóma pressed a hand to her heart and sang: “Blow the wind southerly, southerly, southerly,

  “Blow bonnie breeze o’er the bonnie blue sea —”

  The other voice returned, stronger this time, somehow managing to blend itself with Dóma’s much more powerful mezzo-soprano. Their voices entwined as if they’d been singing together forever. It was no hardship for Dóma to adjust her own pitch to better match the other one.

  “Blow the wind southerly, southerly, southerly,

  “Blow bonnie breeze, and bring her to me.”

  The violin sang a soft little melody and Dóma rolled to her feet, crossing to the open window, almost dreading what she would see outside.

  Her eyes widened and her heart squeezed impossibly tight as she pushed aside the flowers on her windowsill, absently noticing that they were no longer wilting. But that was a tiny detail compared to what waited for her.

  Freyda stood in her little cottage garden, a bouquet of violets in her hand. Perched on the garden fence behind her, Fara softly played her violin, while Alamé and Eddie swayed together beneath the trees, hands clasped anxiously as they watched Freyda sing her heart out.

  The scene was filled with such hope and such silly romance, that Dóma laughed through her tears and hopped up to sit on the windowsill, swinging her legs over so she faced outside.

  “Oh, is it not sweet to hear the breeze singing,” she sang as Freyda came closer, offering the beautiful violets for her to take. “As lightly it comes o’er the deep rolling sea?”

  “But sweeter and dearer by far when ‘tis bringing,” Freyda answered, her voice strengthening with relief as Dóma took the flowers and her hand as well. “The barque of my true love in safety to me.”

  Tugging on the hand she had claimed, Dóma found that sitting on the windowsill made her taller than Freyda for once. A perfect height, in fact. So she took advantage by cradling that beloved thin face in her hands and kissing her firmly on the lips.

  “Blow the wind southerly, southerly, southerly,

  “Blow the wind south o’er the bonnie blue sea!” their enthusiastic audience sang, making Freyda laugh and Dóma giggle.

  Wrapping her arms around Dóma’s waist, Freyda pulled her off the windowsill and swung her around, singing loudly and with more enthusiasm than skill: “Blow the wind southerly, southerly, southerly —”

  But it was Dóma who sang the last line, holding Freyda’s face between her hands again, resting their foreheads together, lips brushing lips. “Blow bonnie breeze, my lover to me.”

  And this time when they kissed, nothing else intruded. All Dóma knew was the softness of Freyda’s lips, the taste of her mouth, the scent of her skin as she wrapped her arms around her, burying her fingers in her hair. Finally, after everything, Dóma finally knew what it felt like to stroke those messy blonde strands.

  They were every bit as soft as she had imagined.

  “I’m sorry,” Freyda whispered, once they broke apart and she lowered Dóma slowly back to the ground.

  “I know,” Dóma replied, stealing another kiss because she could. It was okay now, it was allowed. “I’m sorry too. We need to talk more.”

  Freyda smiled wryly. “Or at all.”

  “I have raspberry and white chocolate muffins in my kitchen.”

  “And coffee?”

  Dóma smiled and took Freyda’s hand, noticing that the others had already left as she tugged Freyda through the overgrown garden towards the front door. “And coffee.”

  “Even though you hate it.”

  Dóma glanced back over her shoulder, feeling like little bubbles were popping inside her to see such bright happiness on Freyda’s face. She vowed she would make her look that way at least once a day, no matter what it took. “You noticed?”

  Laughing, it was Freyda this time who stole a kiss, before bundling Dóma in through the front door. “I notice everything.”

  “Liar.”

  “Not true! I notice plenty of things,” Freyda protested as they reached the kitchen, and she turned Dóma back to face
her. “I can see you haven’t been eating properly.” Her hand gently touched Dóma’s cheek.

  She looked down, aware that she was blushing. “I needed a new diet anyway. I can certainly do with losing a few pounds.”

  Freyda cradled her face, every bit as gently as Dóma had previously held hers. “But I love you as you are,” she told her, voice gruff with embarrassment, eyes bright with emotion. “Exactly as you are.”

  Dóma hugged her so she could hide her face, and Freyda’s arms wrapped instantly around her, wonderfully tight. They fitted together so well, with Dóma’s head nestled perfectly beneath Freyda’s chin, her curves filling the spaces in Freyda’s slender frame. They fit together so naturally and both sighed with contentment.

  Suddenly nothing else seemed to matter: not diets, muffins, the past, or the rash words that had been said. All that mattered was here, now, the two of them together.

  Dóma had felt a hint of this the last time she’d been in Freyda’s arms, when they’d returned from Siberia, but she’d been too angry to appreciate it. She hadn’t wanted to be close then, she’d wanted to hurt Freyda as much as she’d been hurting.

  It had made her furious that she’d wanted to forget her anger so easily, to put it all aside and stay in her arms. That was why she’d pulled away, lashed out, run.

  But not now. Now all she wanted to do was stay like this forever, locked in this connection, feeling safe, treasured, loved, as well as protective, caring and loving in return. They each gave as much as they took, and finally, finally, it was perfect.

  “Remind me to send a thank you card to the wind,” Dóma murmured, easing her head back just enough to stretch up on her toes those last precious inches to meet Freyda’s descending kiss.

  Outside the window, Carroll and Symphony sang their evening song. Inside Dóma and Freyda made a secret music all their own.

  Epilogue

  THE NEXT TIME Freyda ran from the Shadow Garden, she took Dóma with her. This time there was no need to search for emptiness. She didn’t need to seek out abandoned, desolate places to fill the cold corners of her soul.

  Instead she lay down in an alpine flower meadow, with Dóma’s head resting on her shoulder. There she smiled up at the endless blue sky, her dark wings providing a perfect blanket for them both.

  “You’re so warm,” Dóma murmured appreciatively, rubbing her nose against Freyda’s throat. “You’re always the perfect temperature.”

  “Thank my imagination,” Freyda chuckled, running her hand through the loose curls of Dóma’s hair. She loved the way they clung to her fingers as if they didn’t want to let her go.

  She’d never been comfortable with touch, not since her mother left her at the Institute, but with Dóma she was greedy. She needed to touch and be touched, to connect, to claim and be claimed. It had surprised her at first, and she’d worried Dóma wouldn’t like it, but it seemed her Songbird was every bit as greedy in return.

  “It’s a gift,” Dóma agreed, sighing and wriggling to get more comfortable as they lapsed into comfortable silence.

  Somewhere close by a skylark was singing, a rippling river of notes that poured over the pristine sky, rising, ever rising. It provided a lovely lyrical counterpoint to the buzzing insects busy amongst the flowers all around them.

  “I could stay here forever,” Freyda murmured, yawning sleepily as her eyes started to close.

  Dóma traced circles over the t-shirt covering Freyda’s belly and hummed a gentle, soothing lullaby. “Sleep,” she encouraged. “I’ll keep watch and make sure no one sees us.”

  The lullaby filled Freyda’s senses, blending with the insects and the skylark, conspiring with the warm sun to send her mind far from the world.

  DÓMA FELT THE moment Freyda surrendered to sleep, as the ever-present tension that held her body together finally relaxed. She smiled, drawing hearts over the red cotton covering Freyda’s skin, and hummed softly. As her hand stroked over Freyda’s hip, she was surprised to feel a small lump in the pocket.

  Reaching carefully inside, Dóma pulled out an amethyst heart. The same one she’d added to her light-catchers as a secret wish, a private prayer, one she’d never expected anyone to notice. Yet Freyda had found it, taken it down and kept it. Apparently she’d had Dóma’s heart all along.

  “I never stood a chance,” she sighed, sliding the heart back into Freyda’s pocket for safe-keeping and letting the music inside her swell to meet the singing skylark.

  Then she watched over her love, because she didn’t always have to be the one being looked after. She could be strong sometimes too. And the moment when Freyda stretched, blinked open her bright blue eyes and smiled made everything worth it.

  “I love you,” Dóma whispered, bending down to kiss that smile, to claim it and keep it forever for her own.

  The skylark sang above them, the insects hummed and the world turned on as Freyda wrapped her wings about them both and took them safely home.