Oakwing Page 4

  Olor ignored him again. “The slightly smelly fairy chooses.”

  “Okay, now that’s not necessary,” said Rowan, stung. “I’ll do it, then.”

  Aiken tried to hold her back, as if to say I’ll handle this, which only wound her up even more.

  “I said, I’ll do it,” said Rowan through gritted teeth.

  Taking a breath, she squinted out into the gloomy lake. By the light of a nearby fountain lit from beneath, she took in the size of the task. The water was full of birds. Geese, swans, outrageously-colored Mandarin ducks, even pelicans. More than she could count. She didn’t have a clue which one could be the GodMother.

  Aiken whispered rather too loudly into her ear, “Think ‘friend of royalty,’ right? Glamorous-looking, that kind of thing.”

  There were certainly all manner of brightly-colored birds out there. The glow of the fountain glinted off one duck whose feathers were practically all tinged with gold. Surely that must be the one?

  “Rowan, you don’t see the GodMother. You recognize her,” whispered Harold into her other ear.

  “No conferring!” yelled Olor.

  Rowan turned away from the golden duck. She was more confused than ever. Her eyes first fell on a great white swan, and then a grand pelican. How was she supposed to just “recognize” the GodMother? She turned away from the lake, unsure what to do. She sensed the others watching her closely.

  “Whenever you’re ready,” said Olor, folding her arms.

  Rowan turned back to face the lake. A gust of wind blew spray from the fountain across their faces. Rowan closed her eyes, turning her face to the sky and feeling the droplets speckle her cheeks, just as her mother had turned her face to the rain by the weeping beech those seven years before. Rowan took a deep breath and let her shoulders drop. When she opened her eyes, she was looking directly at a little brown duck by the water’s edge, shepherding a row of chicks up onto the bank. One of the chicks kept slipping down the bank, so the brown mother duck turned and let the chick jump onto her back to climb the slope. It was as if someone had turned on a light in Rowan’s head.

  “That one,” said Rowan. “The little brown duck just there.”

  The duck suddenly dived beneath the surface of the water and disappeared for what seemed like an age. The ripples gradually stilled. Aiken slapped his palm to his face in annoyance, and Rowan shifted from one foot to the other. Beside her Harold nodded his head.

  Suddenly the surface of the lake broke and a shape burst out, spinning as it went, with crystal droplets of water flying in all directions. As the shape turned in the air, it seemed to transform, its body lengthening, limbs growing, and human features emerging from beneath the feathers. It was no longer a brown duck but a fairy, glowing from within like the fountain. The GodMother.

  Aiken patted Rowan on the back. “Never in doubt.”

  Olor rolled her eyes and flopped onto the ground.

  The GodMother hovered just above the water’s surface, sending ripples out across the lake. She wore a great cloak that shimmered in deep shades of blue, cream, and brown, rising up to a rich green hood that shone like the head of a mallard duck. Rowan took a step back in awe. But then a rustling in the trees made her spin around. She turned to see hundreds of feathered fairies in all manner of colors and plumage slowly appearing from behind nearby bushes and trees. Their eyes met hers as they rose into the air as one, each pair of wings making a violin sound that together made up a beautiful harmonic chord, like an orchestra tuning up before a performance.

  “It’s good to see you here, Harold,” said the GodMother.

  Harold bowed his head.

  “We’ve come to bring you a restless soul, GodMother,” said Harold, nudging Rowan forward with his beak.

  “I need to get home,” said Rowan quietly.

  The GodMother hovered near to Rowan, beckoning her closer. She held out a hand to cup Rowan’s cheek. A faint glow passed around Rowan’s body, and all tension left her.

  “You’re safe here, you know that?”

  Rowan nodded.

  “But still you want to return?”

  Rowan nodded again. The GodMother spread her arms wide as if conducting the orchestra of fairies that surrounded her.

  “My children,” she said to the fairies. “You all wept beneath the beeches. You all felt unloved.”

  Rowan looked around at hundreds of tiny heads, all nodding in agreement.

  “But now, do you feel loved? Do you want to stay?”

  The fairies nodded vigorously, and their wings beat the air more quickly, until the music rose to a deafening crescendo. Some fairies flew even higher, looping and turning in the air. The GodMother turned her gaze back to Rowan as the music died away. Rowan felt a comforting warmth on her face.

  “It’s all right to be sad, my child. There’s always something that we miss. But this? This is a magical place, unlike any other you have known.”

  Rowan looked around at the smiling fairies willing her to like it here too.

  “But do you know the best thing about it?” continued the GodMother, drawing even closer. “We all understand how you feel.”

  Rowan could almost sense the GodMother looking deep inside her. For the first time since she’d found herself in this place, she felt a small ache of connection. But quickly she remembered the look on Dad’s and Willow’s faces as they’d left the apartment that morning. One muddled and lost, the other trusting and innocent. They weren’t perfect, but they were her family. And she missed them. More than anything.

  “GodMother,” she began. “Thank you. Thank you for your welcome. But I made a terrible mistake. I know I shouldn’t be here.”

  The GodMother looked deep into her eyes. Finally she spoke.

  “Mistakes don’t occur that often,” admitted the GodMother, straightening back up. “But happen they do.” She looked long and hard at Harold as she said this. Her voice grew firm. “None of this changes one simple fact. You are here to stay.” She began to fly back toward the center of the lake.

  “What about the Heart of Oak?” Rowan called after her.

  The GodMother paused in midair and turned back round. Her face was pale beneath the moonlight.

  “If the Heart of Oak is real,” she replied, “fairies shouldn’t go looking for it. The last one who thought she’d found it was never seen again.”

  “Because the fairies would become human?”

  The GodMother dropped her gaze. “I’m afraid not.”

  “I would still like to try. Please help me, GodMother?”

  “I can feel the hurt in you, little one. It’s a pain I know only too well. Harold did the right thing in bringing you here. We will care for you. In time the thing that hurts you will get smaller and smaller, until you hardly know it’s there. I promise.”

  Rowan’s heart sank as the GodMother rose back up into the air, turning out over the lake to be followed by the hundreds of Bird Fairies, shifting and swarming in the sky like a cloud of starlings at dusk. Rowan stood on the bank of the lake, feeling very alone. She felt a hand on one shoulder, and a feathered head nuzzling into the other. Aiken and Harold were standing on either side of her.

  “I thought you said she was the answer, Harold?” said Rowan.

  “I’m afraid . . .”

  “It is what it is?” Rowan sighed.

  “I’m afraid . . . I was wrong,” Harold corrected her. “When my wing is healed, I’ll take you back to Hyde Park. I’m sorry we came all this way for nothing.”

  Rowan gazed helplessly out across the lake. Hyde Park was no better than here as far as she was concerned. Neither of them was home. But for now at least, it didn’t seem like she had a choice.

  “Come with me,” said a voice behind them. “I’ll take you to our shelter.” It was Olor, sitting astride the black swan’s neck. She held out her hand, offering to help Rowan climb aboard. A tiny smile of sympathy crossed Olor’s lips. Rowan nodded her thanks and took Olor’s hand. Aiken followed after, turni
ng to look at Harold.

  “Joining us?” he said.

  “Birds shouldn’t fly on other birds,” replied Harold.

  “What about birds that can’t fly?” said Aiken.

  Harold cocked his head sideways, seeming to accept the logic. He hopped onto Cygnus’s back.

  “How am I supposed to hold on?”

  But Olor wasn’t waiting to find out. She dug her heels into the swan’s sides, and it jerked forward. Rowan grabbed on to Harold to stop him from falling off as the swan whistled down the bank, running across the water’s surface briefly before it took off into the sky.

  * Chapter Six *

  HOW CHICKS LEARN TO FLY

  The great swan beat its heavy wings to carry them up and over a little tree-covered island before it swooped down again to splash to a halt in the water by a huge weeping beech on the other side of the lake. Olor guided Cygnus across the water toward the tree, before pulling back the branches like a curtain and showing them inside.

  Beneath the great beech’s canopy were the hundreds of fairies that had followed the GodMother. At the water’s edge was a bonfire that reflected sparks of light off the lake’s ripples, and around the fire the fairies whirled in an airborne dance. Most fairies spun as couples, orbiting the fire as their wings played music to accompany their movements. And at the center of it all was the GodMother, laughing and reeling around like a conductor dancing to the music they were creating. Aiken grinned and jumped off the swan’s back, turning to Olor with his arm outstretched.

  “Dance with me, Featherwing?”

  Olor rolled her eyes. She slid down the swan’s neck and whisked past Aiken into the crowd. Aiken smiled and chased after her. A multicolored fairy thrust an acorn cup of sweet-smelling liquid into Rowan’s hands as Harold leaned over to shout into her ear above the fairy music.

  “Are you all right?” asked Harold.

  Rowan shrugged and tried to smile, but she sensed she wasn’t really fooling her new friend.

  “What about dancing? Might make you feel better?” he suggested.

  “I’m not very good with dancing,” said Rowan, pointing at her legs. “These things never seem to do what I want them to.”

  At the other side of the bonfire, Rowan could see that Aiken had finally convinced the reluctant Olor to dance with him.

  “Yes, well, I have a similar problem,” said Harold, shuffling his spindly claws in the dust and trying to wiggle his tail around. He looked ridiculous, and Rowan burst out laughing. Harold winced a little when he realized his wing still hurt, but he still managed to tilt his head affectionately toward Rowan.

  “Okay, I can’t help you with the dancing, but there is something I’m expert at. Come with me.”

  Rowan followed Harold out through the beech branches to a clearing in the small wood. Unable to fly with his damaged wing, he hopped up onto a low-hanging branch, ripped a few leaves off with his beak, and let them flutter to the ground below to form a soft pile.

  “Okay, come up here.”

  She was a bit suspicious but scrabbled up the tree trunk to edge along the branch until she was perched next to Harold.

  “So,” he began, “when chicks learn to fly, it’s pretty simple. They don’t have a lot of time to worry about it. Their mothers get them out of the nest, sit them on a branch, and . . .”

  Rowan yelled as Harold pushed her off the branch. “Oof!” She hit the ground with a thump, just missing the soft pile of leaves that was intended to break her fall.

  “Hmmm. That wasn’t how it was meant to work,” Harold said, puzzled.

  Rowan brushed herself off and shot him an angry look. “What was that for?”

  She stood with her hands on her hips. “If you want something done right,” she said, “you have to do it yourself.” She found some downy feathers and made a larger, more comfortable-looking pile of them beneath the branch, before climbing back up the tree.

  “Move along, please.”

  Harold shuffled aside. Rowan raised herself up, tall and straight, flexed the muscles in her back, and stretched out her wings. She took a deep breath in and sprang into the air like a diver from a springboard. Her wings buzzed, but rather than making the same awful sound as before, out sang a single, clear, beautiful note. She gently glided toward the ground as a big smile spread across her face. She was really doing it! However, she didn’t quite know how to land just yet, and hit the ground too quickly, tripping over and landing flat on her face.

  “Okay. Need to work harder on that bit,” she said under her breath. She turned to see Harold up in the branch looking particularly proud. “So. What else can you teach me?” she asked.

  • • •

  Aiken and Olor collapsed into a feathery seat, tired from dancing.

  Olor took a dainty sip from an acorn cup. “What happened to your friends?”

  Aiken realized he had forgotten all about them.

  “Oh, you know. Rowan’s only just become a fairy. It’s all new to her. Probably needed to take a little time out.”

  “Sure. It doesn’t bother you, then? Being away from all the other Oakwings?”

  “Me? No.” He puffed himself up. “I’m kind of what you would call a born adventurer.”

  Aiken turned away from Olor so he could stare moodily into the distance, and found himself looking straight into Cygnus’s beak.

  “Agh!” he screamed.

  “Shall we go see what the others are up to?” asked Olor, with a badly disguised smirk.

  “Sure. Yep. Why not.”

  Olor led Aiken out through the branches. In the nearby clearing Rowan was swooping and soaring through the branches like she’d been flying all her life. Aiken’s mouth dropped open.

  “Best keep that shut,” said Rowan as she whizzed past, making the bangs of his hair fly up. “You never know what’ll fly in.”

  Olor looked a little annoyed. “Not bad for a scruffy Oakwing. Why don’t we have a race?”

  “Race?” said Rowan and Aiken at the same time.

  “Sure. Just to the flagpole on Buckingham Palace. Super-easy.”

  “I don’t think she’s ready for—” Harold began.

  “Of course,” said Rowan, cutting him off. “Love to.”

  Harold leaned in to whisper to her. “You’ve only just stopped landing on your face, Rowan.”

  “I’m going to show her what a scruffy Oakwing can do.”

  Harold shot Rowan a long look before stepping back out of her way. “Who’s going to start us off, then?” Rowan asked.

  “Go!” shouted Olor, shooting off like a rocket and taking the other two by surprise.

  “What happened to ‘ready’ and ‘set’?” yelled Rowan as she and Aiken sprang off in pursuit.

  The three fairies whipped along the surface of the lake like swallows in summer, Olor stretching out in the lead, with Aiken close behind. Rowan gritted her teeth as she tried to catch up. Olor and Aiken took turns showing off, with Aiken spiraling under a footbridge as Olor looped over the top of it upside down. Rowan had plenty of determination but not enough skill, and narrowly missed the tail of a duck that squawked off in a flap. As she turned in the air to apologize to the bird, she took her eye off where she was headed and careered into an overhanging branch by the side of the lake, dropping like a stone into the water below.

  “Can’t! Swim!” gurgled Rowan as she struggled to keep her head above the water.

  Aiken heard her shout and spun round. There was no time for his usual joking. In one seamless motion he swooped down and scooped Rowan out of the water, and deposited her on the bank of the lake. They both lay there, Rowan rubbing her head where she’d hit the branch and trying to get her breath back.

  “Funny. I was going to suggest that you have a bath.” Olor casually fluttered down next to them. “Are we going to finish this race or what?”

  “Give her a chance, Olly.”

  “No, I’m totally fine,” said Rowan as she shook the water off her wings “Let’s . .
. go!”

  Rowan jumped into the air. Olor looked at Aiken and smiled.

  “You’re not going to let yourself get beaten by two girls, are you?”

  She shot off after Rowan. Aiken shrugged and raced after them both.

  For the first time since she’d become a fairy, Rowan was starting to enjoy herself. Well ahead of the other two, she curved up away from the lake and over the trees lining the Mall—the long, straight road that led to Buckingham Palace. Olor and Aiken strained to keep up, but she was too far ahead for them to catch her. Rowan sped between the two lines of trees toward the palace. It was an incredible feeling. As she passed the shining, golden, winged angel on top of the Victoria Memorial, she relaxed into the flight, closed her eyes, and felt strangely peaceful. She rolled and spun in the air. A strange sensation came over her. It started as a tingle, like pins and needles. It soon felt like all her muscles were stronger, her senses sharper. But it was more physical than that. She felt like the actual dimensions of her body were shrinking and stretching all over. As she curved around the flagpole on top of the palace, with the sun just breaking into the sky behind it, she saw Aiken and Olor looking on with their mouths open wide, hovering mid-air. Then the stretching and shrinking sensation started again, before fading back to a tingle as she arced back toward them.

  “Do you have any idea what just happened?” asked Aiken, his wings beating furiously behind him.

  “Er, I beat you both by miles?”

  Aiken and Olor looked at each other.

  “You just, well . . . Just for a few seconds you . . . transformed into a white swallow,” said Aiken.

  “I did what?”

  Somewhere out there in the blackness, something howled into the night.

  “We need to talk to the GodMother,” said Olor. “Right now.”

  * Chapter Seven *

  A WING AND A PRAYER

  Rowan, Olor, and Aiken snored quietly, hidden out of sight, bundled up in a bed of downy feathers in a duck house on the lake. Beyond their shelter the sun was beginning to set again toward the end of a bright summer’s day. Humans were striding across the park wearing sneakers with their office clothes, keen to get home. If they had bothered looking over at the duck house on its island, they might have seen a small brown duck talking to a robin by the door.