Oakwing Page 7

  Rowan could see what Aiken was trying to do. If he could distract the men by the river’s edge, the rest of them could sneak past.

  “Go on. Both of you,” she whispered, willing the other men to join their friend. But they were still deep in conversation, and neither of them moved.

  Aiken looked over to his friends and shrugged, as if to ask what he should do next. Rowan made a spinning motion with her hands, and Aiken nodded before doing an impressive loop-the-loop.

  The first man looked at the bottle in his hand, then looked back to Aiken. He slapped himself in the face, before turning back to his friends.

  “You have to see this,” he whispered.

  The two friends joined him, hypnotized by Aiken’s aerobatics. The coast finally clear for the others to creep past, Rowan quietly urged Elaphus on. Once they were safely on the other side of the pub, Rowan waved her arms at Aiken to get him to join them. But he had a mischievous look in his eyes. He slowly flew farther out into the river, drawing the men in a trance toward him.

  “Tinker Bell!” one of the men whispered in awe, almost eye to eye with Aiken. “Is it time to go to Neverland?”

  Harold was so embarrassed, he couldn’t look. “Come on, Aiken!” he hissed. “We don’t have—”

  But Aiken wasn’t finished.

  “Yes, Peter Pan,” he said in a high voice. “Fly away with me!”

  The men’s feet were right on the edge of the riverbank now. They held out their arms, and Rowan thought they were trying to steady themselves. But instead they began flapping them, as if they could fly. Then they teetered forward and crashed into the water below. Aiken began laughing loudly, but his laughter was cut short when a sudden splash of water from the men soaked his wings. He darted over toward the riverbank, flying jerkily with his sodden wings, before landing in a puddle. Rowan and Olor couldn’t stop laughing. Harold was less impressed.

  “Show-off,” he said. “Come on, Aiken. This is no time to be splashing around.”

  The men thrashed about in the water, dragging themselves back toward the river’s edge. Aiken shook the water off his wings and began to fly back to his friends. Rowan saw a huge orange shape loom up out of the darkness behind Aiken.

  Before she could cry out, a fox grabbed Aiken from behind. His jaws latched on to Aiken’s belt of twigs, and Rowan’s friend gave a yelp of shock. The fox dashed through the stag’s legs, carrying a struggling Aiken.

  Harold was after the fox in a flash, jabbing at its head with his beak, but he couldn’t loosen the fox’s grip. A shake of the fox’s head batted Harold off to the side, rolling him across the ground and catching his injured wing.

  “Elaphus, let’s go!” shouted Rowan, jumping onto the deer’s head and spurring it into a headlong gallop down the riverside path after Aiken and the fox. They clattered along the path, sheltered by trees and bushes from the houses nearby, but then the fox swung sharply to the left down a narrow path toward the bright lights, cars, and people. Elaphus slid to a stop as Harold caught up, shaking off his painful fall.

  “We can’t follow them through there,” warned Harold. “People wouldn’t give a city fox a second look, but a deer? In the middle of the town? It’s too dangerous.”

  “We can’t just let them take him!” Rowan gasped. “What will they do to him?”

  “There’s nothing we can do, Rowan. It is what it is.” But Harold couldn’t meet her eye.

  Rowan’s hurt turned to anger. She wasn’t going to let a fox do something terrible to another one of her friends.

  “No, Harold, it isn’t. There is everything we can do. Come on, Olor.”

  Olor jumped up behind Rowan, hanging on to the stag’s antlers as Rowan shouted into his ear, “Let’s go!”

  The stag took off like a shot down the pathway, leaving a stunned Harold in their wake. The path became a road that wound under a railway bridge. A train rattled overhead. Bursting out from under the bridge, they were met by the sound and fury of a huge intersection, with four lanes of traffic zooming in opposite directions. Rowan felt fear and panic rise in her, but she steeled herself. There was a job to do.

  She spurred Elaphus on, clinging tightly to him to keep from being blown off his back by the slipstream from passing cars. Rowan raised her head as best she could and caught sight of the fox loping across the roadway. He slipped through the great glass doors of a shiny shopping center, just as a security guard was emerging. The guard’s mouth dropped open as the fox raced between his legs.

  Elaphus tore after the fox, forcing cars to brake and swerve out of the way. As the stag sped past the security guard, Rowan smiled apologetically and then glanced over her shoulder. Harold was following them, but by this point the guard’s legs had buckled beneath him and he’d sunk to the ground, his head in his hands. He didn’t even notice the small robin as it whisked past him.

  Elaphus ducked his antlers down and burst through the doors of the mall. His hooves careered across the dimly lit marble floors as the group chased after Aiken and the fox. The shopping center would have seemed impressive to Rowan at the best of times—four empty nighttime floors of shops, glass, and escalators, with an arched glass roof that stretched its entire length. Now that she was fairy-size, it was like riding through a polished white grand canyon. The fox paused, turned to snarl at them, and then scurried away, nimbly leaping from stairs to display units, easily negotiating the slippery surfaces. But for Elaphus it was an obstacle course. Rowan tried to guide the stag as best she could as he slid around elevator shafts, stairways, and benches. Then all of a sudden the fox seemed to disappear into thin air. Elaphus skated to an abrupt halt.

  “There!” shouted Olor, pointing to the floor above. A flash of orange reflected against the ghostly white of the marble.

  “We have to go up, Elaphus!” cried Rowan, urging him up the steps. The stag’s hooves were not built for stairs, and he scrabbled and slipped and crashed into the walls, throwing Rowan and Olor violently from side to side.

  “Wait for us here,” Rowan urged the great beast, and she and Olor soared up into the huge atrium. They spiraled around the walkways that stretched up the height of the building. Rowan looked anxiously for any sign of Aiken and the fox.

  “There!” Olor whispered, pointing up.

  On a glass-walled stairwell jutting out into the airy space at the top of the building sat the fox, its tail curled around its feet. Rowan and Olor flew up and landed on the handrail just above the creature. It was still dangling a bedraggled Aiken from its jaws. He didn’t seem to be injured—that was something, at least.

  “Hello, girls,” he gasped. “Sorry I’ve been rather . . . held up.” Aiken grimaced and tried to shift his body, but the fox’s jaw tightened around his belt, and Aiken let out a yelp of protest.

  “Let him go,” Rowan demanded. “Now.”

  “On one condition,” said a voice.

  At the top of the stairs loomed the largest fairy Rowan had yet seen. He was as big as two fists and was clad in a fox-fleece hooded robe of deep orange and gray. Two great glossy black wings protruded from the back. It could only be . . . Vulpes.

  * Chapter Eleven *

  THE DARK FAIRY OF THE FOX

  His eyes were bright but narrow, his mouth was hidden beneath a gray beard speckled with black, and his voice was dark, deep, and strangely silky—like bitter plain chocolate.

  “I will let the Oakwing go. But in return you must come with me, Rowan,” Vulpes said, holding out a hand to her.

  “She’s not going anywhere. Except to her mother,” Olor said, placing a protective arm across Rowan’s chest.

  “Oh, I’m entirely in favor of organizing a reunion,” said Vulpes, his voice oozing menace. He leaned toward Rowan and raised an eyebrow. “I’d like to find her again almost as much as you would.”

  “And then what will you do to her?” Rowan cried.

  Vulpes spoke slowly and quietly.

  “It really hurts that you would think I could do something . . .
unkind,” he said. “I only want to return something of hers.”

  He reached into a small pouch that was slung across his shoulders, and pulled out a necklace. He hovered closer to them, dangling it in front of them. The oak pendant. The Heart of Oak. Rowan reached out for it, but Vulpes quickly gathered it back up into his fist.

  “All in good time. First I’d like to demonstrate that my intentions are entirely honorable,” he said. “Would it help if I let this poor Oakwing go?”

  Rowan and Olor looked at each other, surprised that it would be this easy. Vulpes hovered back to land where Aiken was suspended from the fox’s mouth.

  “I feel terrible about this,” said Vulpes softly, picking at Aiken’s chewed and mangled belt. “I simply must get you a new one.”

  He unfastened a strap that stretched across his own chest and lashed it around Aiken. Only, he didn’t tie it round Aiken’s waist; he looped it around the boy fairy’s chest, pulling his wings in tight to his body so that he couldn’t move them. Then Vulpes ushered the fox over to a narrow gap in the railings. The fox dangled Aiken out over the four-story drop down to the marble floor below.

  “Now,” continued Vulpes, “I would be only too happy to let him go.”

  “No!” Rowan and Olor cried at once.

  “Well, do make up your mind,” replied Vulpes. “This is most confusing.”

  “Enough,” gasped Rowan, stepping toward him. “I’ll come with you.”

  “Don’t go with him!” said Olor.

  Rowan raised a hand to silence her friend.

  “But I need to know that my friends are safe first. Put him down and send the fox away.”

  Vulpes narrowed his eyes. “As you wish.”

  He held his hand out, and the fox pulled back from the edge, dropping Aiken in a heap onto the floor, before disappearing down the stairs.

  “Get up, boy,” Vulpes said.

  Aiken scrambled to his feet and started toward the girls, but Vulpes caught him by the scruff of the neck.

  “Not just yet . . . Oak . . . Wing,” he whispered slowly and deliberately into Aiken’s ear, before turning back to Rowan. “Come down from your perch, little fairy. Wouldn’t you like to see this lovely necklace up close now?”

  Vulpes dangled the jewelry from a long, yellow fingernail.

  “Don’t trust the rusty old furball!” said Aiken, as Vulpes tightened his arm around his neck. “Just go. Both of you!”

  Rowan looked at Olor.

  “You go, Olor. He only wants me. I want to know you’re both safe.”

  “You can trust me, Rowan,” said Vulpes, calmly hovering up to her eye level. “Here, take the necklace; it’s all yours.”

  Rowan didn’t trust Vulpes, but she wanted to hold that pendant in her hand more than anything else in the world. She leaned out from the rail, slowly extending her arm, expecting at any moment that he might snatch it away. But he didn’t. The necklace dropped into her open palm. “Stay with me, Rowan,” said Vulpes, slinking back to the floor, his unblinking eyes fixed on her all the way.

  Rowan looked over at Olor, and nodded. Olor hesitated, then sprang up into the air and away. Rowan lost sight of her friend as the fairy disappeared behind an exposed elevator shaft. Rowan took a deep breath and jumped down from the handrail to stand facing Aiken and Vulpes.

  “Now let him go,” she said as firmly as she could manage. From behind her came the sinister scrape of claws on marble. She glanced back over her shoulder. The fox was back.

  “My pleasure,” said Vulpes. With a sudden movement he lifted Aiken into the air and tossed him over the glass barrier, out into the void.

  “No!” Rowan felt the air leave her body.

  Vulpes signaled to the fox, and the creature leapt toward Rowan, its lips drawn back from pointed teeth. Rowan screwed her eyes shut, desperately trying to transform into something, anything that might fight off the fox. But nothing happened. Her powers had deserted her. Before she had time to wonder why, she felt an impact from her side. But it didn’t feel like the dreaded jaws of the fox. Instead she felt the welcome embrace of a fairy’s arms scooping her into the air. Rowan opened her eyes.

  “Miss me?” Olor yelled as they swooped away through the gleaming building, her wings vibrating with urgent musical chords. Diving toward the exit, they were joined in the air by . . .

  “Harold!”

  . . . who was carrying a bedraggled fairy on his back . . .

  “Aiken!”

  “That midair catch isn’t a trick I’d like to try again. Not much room for error,” said Harold.

  They swept down to the ground floor, with Vulpes’s screams ringing in their ears. Elaphus was cantering toward the exit. Olor flew expertly above him and dropped Rowan onto his glossy back, before flying down to grab on to his neck. Behind them the big fox was racing down the stairs with an enraged Vulpes riding it, spurring it onward. Elaphus started scrabbling across the marble, his hooves sliding like they were on ice. Bellowing in panic, he bundled past a stunned cleaner.

  Rowan glanced back. Right behind them the fox wasn’t so lucky. He lost his footing and slipped into a glass wall with a huge thud as the cleaner stared, openmouthed. The fox scuttled out through the door, darting between the man’s legs. Rowan could just glimpse Vulpes hanging beneath the fox’s neck. The security guard from the other end of the mall arrived, his face glistening as he gasped for breath. He and the cleaner exchanged a look of disbelief.

  “Did you just . . . ?” said the guard.

  The cleaner shook his head.

  “Good. Me neither.”

  Rowan felt a rush of cold air hit her body. Turning back round to the front, she saw that they’d emerged out into the street. Elaphus galloped down the middle of the road, forcing cars to swerve out of his way. Rowan ducked down and clung on as best she could. Aiken and Olor did the same. Harold’s claws gripped tight into the stag’s pelt. They raced across a stone bridge, and Rowan stole another glance behind them. She could see Vulpes and the fox in the distance. Streams of orange fur flooded out of side streets as, one by one, more foxes joined the chase. Soon there was a whole mass of orange chasing them over the river. It was as though every fox in London had raced to this point—and the pack was gaining on them.

  “Faster!” Rowan cried.

  Elaphus lengthened his stride, and as they reached the other side of the bridge, he turned sharply to the left. Suddenly it was soft earth underfoot again. They were racing through a park down a long avenue of trees. Ahead of them loomed the enormous red palace of Hampton Court.

  She turned round, and her eyes opened wide as she saw a huge pack of foxes swarming down the avenue of oaks. Elaphus swung to the right again, through yet more trees, to the side of the palace and out the other side through a giant wrought iron gate. But across the road the gates to Bushy Park were shut, and they were far too tall for Elaphus to jump over.

  “We have to say good-bye here, old friend,” said Harold urgently, as they slid from the stag’s back.

  “But the foxes . . . ,” protested Rowan.

  “Are chasing us. If he runs now, they won’t follow him.”

  “Thank you, Elaphus, thank you.” Rowan sprang into the air to kiss the great stag on his soft head. “Now, run!”

  The stag bellowed and galloped straight at the pack of foxes. Rowan breathed a sigh of relief as the foxes scattered and Elaphus disappeared through the trees to safety. Harold and the fairies took their chance, and slipped between the narrow iron bars of the gate.

  “It’s okay. The foxes won’t be able to get through,” Harold said, panting. Rowan felt her shoulders sag with relief. Finally she unclenched her fist to reveal her mother’s pendant—the simple carved tree perfectly complementing the golden oak shape of her own acorn. It seemed like such a small thing for it to be so important. How could this be the key to going home? She held the pendant to her cheek as a fox scream pierced the air behind them. Vulpes’s foxes crowded up against the iron railings of the closed
gate, yelping and howling. At a distance Vulpes sat astride the biggest, angriest fox. He stared straight at Rowan, but he wasn’t coming in. Aiken followed Rowan’s gaze as she met Vulpes’s eyes.

  “Furball’s scared,” he said, by her side.

  “Furball’s waiting to bring an army of foxes through the gates when they open at dawn,” said Harold, flying over to join them. He ruffled his feathers. “We don’t have much time.”

  * Chapter Twelve *

  THE REALM OF THE RIVER FAIRIES

  Time was running out. Dawn wasn’t far away. Rowan and her friends raced through Bushy Park, soaring around an elegant fountain with a golden statue of a beautiful woman. The figure gazed down at Rowan as they flew past, and Rowan remembered her mom again, looking down at her by the Elfin Oak as she read Rowan stories. A shiver of concern ran through Rowan. Would her mom still be here, in Bushy Park—and how would Rowan find where she was hiding? Would they be able to go home together? They had come so far, and yet there was still so much to do. She felt queasy and knew it wasn’t because of the flying this time.

  They followed Harold as he banked left to skim along the surface of a narrow winding river lined on either side by trees. They followed the river under a bridge and into a woodland filled with giant ferns and rhododendron bushes laden with deep red blooms. After passing above a network of brooks, they came to rest on a great lily pad at the edge of a large pond.

  “Somewhere near here,” mumbled Harold. “The entrance must be somewhere near here.”

  “So when the GodMother said you had an idea where Rowan’s mom is,” said Olor, “how much of an idea was it?”

  “Couldn’t she have drawn you a map?” added Aiken.

  “Well,” replied Harold, “our theory was that she’d be hidden near water. Because foxes don’t like it much.”

  “That was your plan?” said Olor. “How do we even know she’s near this pond?”