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  There was a pause and a cough. “We don’t,” Harold admitted.

  Aiken groaned, then lifted up the corner of the lily pad, making them all sway in the other direction. “Nothing under here, beak face.”

  “It’s going to be light soon, so let’s get started,” said Rowan.

  The friends all sprang into the air and began searching around the lake for anything that could be an entrance to a secret hiding place—through ferns, reeds, and overhanging willow trees. There was nothing to be found anywhere. They flopped by the side of the lake. Rowan’s body ached with tiredness, and her tummy rumbled. The ground was wet with dew, and it started to soak right through her. It had been a long night for all of them, and dawn was starting to break, with bruised streaks of light stretching across the sky. Before long the park gates would open for the day. People . . . and foxes . . . could rush in at any moment. Rowan looked all around her. Her eyes came to rest on the still surface of the pond. Rowan stood up as the first ray of morning sun twinkled behind her.

  “So, why would Vulpes and the foxes have been searching all this time and still not found the way in?”

  “Because they’re not very clever?” asked Aiken.

  Rowan ignored his attempt at a joke and continued.

  “What if the entrance wasn’t near the water?

  Aiken looked blank. Rowan could see he had no idea what she was talking about.

  “Aiken, you said River Fairies don’t have toes, they have tails, right?”

  “Yes . . . ?”

  “So they’re not going to walk into their den, are they? They’re going to swim into it.”

  She leapt into the air, her wings trilling with excitement as she circled the lake. She tried to peer beneath the surface of the water, but it was too murky. Instead she turned toward the sky and began spiraling higher and higher.

  “What are you doing, Rowan?” shouted Olor.

  “If my mom is here,” said Rowan, “I’m going to find her.”

  As Rowan wheeled round and round, she tried not to think about the dark, forbidding water below her, nor the fact that she still couldn’t swim. “I’m not scared, I’m not scared,” she murmured to herself. Then she pulled her wings together tightly behind her and dived toward the lake. She closed her eyes and felt the air rush past her face, rippling her wings, as she held out her arms to a point in front of her.

  “Rowan!” screamed Olor.

  It was the last thing Rowan heard as she hit the freezing cold water.

  • • •

  Aiken and Olor rushed to the water’s edge as Rowan smashed through the surface of the lake, disappearing completely from view. They waded in as far as they could get, Aiken even diving under to see if he could glimpse her, but with no success. Bubbles rose to the surface and then subsided, until the water was still again. Aiken and Olor turned to Harold.

  “But she can’t . . .?”

  Harold didn’t look at them.

  “We must have faith in her. The same faith that she just found in herself.”

  • • •

  Rowan didn’t dare open her eyes as she spiraled down into the cold depths of the pond. She’d been holding her breath for so long now that she didn’t even know if she could make it back to the surface. The fear began to rise in her again. Maybe this was the worst idea she’d ever had. Perhaps it would be her last. She blew the air out of her lungs as slowly as she could, until there was none left.

  Suddenly she felt something brush across her leg—something scaly. Then she felt her hand being grasped. What in the Realms holds your hand under water? She opened her eyes. There, right in front of her, was a pale green-eyed girl, with a mane of red hair waving around her head. Rowan realized what had been brushing across her legs. It wasn’t a fish’s tail. It was a girl’s. The girl in front of her was a river fairy.

  The girl gave a brief smile and then flipped down and away from Rowan, to be joined by a group of others. They were tiny mermaid-like creatures with splodgy orange, black, and white tails like little koi carp. They had translucent fins where other fairies would have wings. Their hands beckoned Rowan to follow them.

  Rowan realized that she hadn’t taken a breath in well over a minute. And what’s more, she didn’t need to. Something was happening to her. She looked down to see her legs fusing into a shimmering, scaly tail. Her arms shrank back into her body, and she felt her wings changing shape and dissolving into fins. She was a fish—a silvery white one—turning and gliding through the water. Beside her she felt the reassuring presence of the River Fairies guiding her toward the bottom of the lake.

  As the sediment cleared, Rowan could see that they were swimming toward an underwater cave. They entered the cave’s dark mouth and went deeper still before shafts of light broke up the blackness ahead. She swam toward the glow and broke the surface to find herself in an air pocket of some kind. Here she felt her limbs stretch and reach out as she became a fairy girl again.

  Panic took hold as she thrashed her limbs around and felt her body starting to sink back under. Then the River Fairies pressed against her, bearing her up and over to the water’s edge, before whipping their tails and disappearing back under the water. Rowan lay on the cold, wet rock, sucking in big heaving breaths. “You did it,” she whispered. She allowed herself a small smile before dragging herself to her feet.

  Rowan was standing in a big, airy space like an ancient church built of stalactites and stalagmites. High above her head, chinks in the rock threw shafts of sunlight across the water’s surface, making it sparkle and reflect dancing patterns back up the rock walls.

  A boat made out of bark emerged from a dark cave off to one side. Standing up in the vessel, moving a long wooden pole through the water, was a boatman dressed in black. He pulled up alongside Rowan.

  “An Oakwing, eh?” he said, catching sight of her wings. “How did you get down here?”

  “Er . . . I swam.”

  “Fascinating. An Oakwing that swims.” His eyes narrowed as he gazed into Rowan’s face. He seemed to glimpse something there. “You’d better come with me.”

  Rowan climbed nervously into the boat and sat with the boatman at her back. She took a moment to steel herself. The boatman moved the long pole through the water, and they slowly began to glide through the cavern, heading straight for a waterfall that crashed down from a lip in the cave roof.

  “Are you sure this is . . . ?”

  But Rowan couldn’t finish her sentence before they passed through the cascading water and out the other side. Completely drenched and starting to shiver, she beat her wings to shake off the water and warm herself up as the boat slipped down a dark, winding tunnel that was cut across every now and then by light spilling in from above. Finally it opened out into another cavernous space even larger than the first.

  Rowan felt a mist of tiny droplets speckling her face. Where water spilled in through the cavern roof, it curved into shimmering, twisting, staircase waterfalls. And in the center the water rushed down, only to jet back up again in a series of elaborate natural fountains. The light cutting across the spray formed spectacular rainbows of color. This wasn’t a den. It was a palace. A palace of pure water.

  “Are you . . . ,” Rowan began.

  “Jack,” he said. “Jack Pike. Pleased to meet you.”

  The boatman was no longer wearing black, but instead was dressed in an ornate robe of water lilies over his silvery body. And when he lifted his pole from the water, the pondweed fell away to reveal a pointed trident. He gripped it like a staff as he stepped out of the boat and onto slippery rock. Here he was, right in front of her, the fairy that Harold said had been protecting her mother. The fairy held out his hand to help her out of the boat. His webbed feet stuck to the floor, where hers slid around like they were on ice, and she clung on to him.

  “I do apologize,” Jack began. “Our home isn’t so comfortable for outsiders, but you are most welcome here. Have you come all the way from the Realm of the Tree Fairies?”<
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  “My friends,” she told Jack. “They’re stuck by the lake, and the park is about to open . . .”

  “We’ll take care of them; don’t you worry.”

  Rowan wasn’t sure what to make of him, but she couldn’t wait any longer to ask the question that had been eating away at her insides.

  “My mom,” she whispered. “Is she here?”

  • • •

  Back up in the park, Harold, Aiken, and Olor were getting more and more concerned. The sun was even higher now, and they knew the park gates would be opening soon. It was the time of day when Aiken and Olor would normally be hidden away in treetops or tree trunks, sleeping through the danger of the daylight.

  “I just want to say, Olly,” began Aiken, “that if anything happens to me, I want you to have my collection of sharp sticks.”

  “That’s a very generous offer,” Olor said, not sounding too impressed. “But right now I’m more worried about Rowan.”

  There was a small splash over on the far side of the lake.

  “What was that?” asked Harold.

  Aiken flew over to investigate.

  “Rowan?” he called.

  He hovered as low as he could, trying to peer through the water. He turned back to them.

  “No, nothing here.”

  Suddenly something reached out and plucked him from the air. Ripples circled out as he was dragged beneath the surface.

  “Aiken!” screamed Olor, hurrying over to the water’s edge.

  The waters parted and up rushed Aiken, spluttering droplets everywhere.

  “It’s the River Fairies! I’ve found the way in!”

  He spun round and dived back under. Olor looked at Harold with wide eyes. Harold held out his wing.

  “Erm, after you?”

  “No, my dear Harold, after you,” came a syrupy voice from behind him.

  Harold froze, then slowly turned round. Vulpes was emerging from the undergrowth with a pack of foxes at his sides. Astride the foxes was a gang of dark orange-and-black-furred fairies, with thin orange eyes narrowed against the dewy morning light. Harold slowly backed away from the creeping foxes, toward Olor and the lake.

  He whispered under his breath, “Quick, Olor, into the water.”

  “Come with me, Harold.”

  “Robins and water don’t mix. Now go!”

  “Then fly, Harold, fly!”

  Olor hesitated, then dived under the water. Before Harold could lift off, the foxes pounced on him in a whirl of fur and feather. The fairies riding the orange beasts made sure their animals kept him pinned to the ground. One of the foxes dipped a paw into the lake and whined, trying to work out where the white fairy had disappeared to.

  “What’s under there, Harold? Is it the way in?” Vulpes asked, and rose effortlessly up into the air. He hovered over the water, the beat of his black wings sending ripples out across the lake. Harold gasped for breath and twisted his head away.

  “I said. Is. It. The. Way. In?”

  “I honestly don’t know, Vulpes.”

  “I don’t believe you. And I don’t like animals that lie. Where is the daughter? Where is the Heart of Oak?”

  “They’re both safe from you. Leave her alone.”

  Vulpes cried out with frustration. “Tell me, robin! And don’t think I don’t know who you really are.”

  “You know nothing about me!”

  Vulpes signaled to the fairies and foxes pinning Harold down, and they slowly crushed the wing that Cygnus had injured. Harold cried out, trying to work himself loose. Then the foxes suddenly let go, leaping back and howling as a roaring sound from the lake filled the air. The bedraggled robin’s wing hung limply from his side. Before he could move, a huge wave crashed over him and pulled him into the lake.

  Slowly he sank beneath the surface, his wing useless to help him. Before panic could set in, he found himself cradled by a gentle shoal of River Fairies carrying him deeper and deeper. As they entered the dark cave at the bottom of the lake, his vision began to blur. The last thing he remembered glimpsing was the silver scales of a river fairy’s tail. . . .

  * Chapter Thirteen *

  A FAMILY AFFAIR

  Jack led Rowan up a stone staircase that led behind another waterfall, through glistening corridors, and finally into another large cave with colored crystals jutting out of the rock walls. Here and there smaller streams of water poured down from the cave roof like liquid chandeliers. In the center of the cave a clear sheet of water fell like shimmering glass into a pool below, throwing up a mist that swirled around the space.

  A shaft of light illuminated a green figure behind the falling water, standing on an island of jagged rock. A wooden bridge linked the island to the main shore. Music rang out across the cave. Rowan recognized the song immediately. It was a tune that could only be played on a violin, a string of notes that she remembered from her childhood. Rowan crept closer to the pool. The sheet of cascading water made the figure flicker and sparkle.

  Almost without realizing it, Rowan vibrated her wings to create a musical note that harmonized with the music she could hear. For a second they seemed to play a duet, perfectly in tune. Then the violin stopped, and the figure slowly moved behind the glimmering wall of water to emerge at one side. First came a hand holding the violin, intricately fashioned from a carved acorn cup, then another hand grasping a reed for a bow. Then a long flowing green robe of rowan leaves, and a headdress made of woven willow nestled on top of auburn hair.

  “Mom,” Rowan breathed. There was no mistaking the face from the photograph in Rowan’s apartment. Her mother’s face lit up as she swept over the bridge and enfolded Rowan in her arms, the violin and bow clattering to the ground. Rowan crumpled into the embrace. Even through her mother’s robe of leaves, Rowan caught that familiar scent she had almost forgotten. A sweet smell that had long since left the clothes in the wardrobe that her dad couldn’t bring himself to pack away. This was truly her mother, after all these years. As the tears started to come, Rowan slowly let out a breath. She didn’t dare let go. She could feel her mother trembling. Rowan looked up into her face. Her cheeks were wet with tears. Finally her mother broke away to gaze at Rowan.

  “It’s not a trick, is it, Mom? It’s really you?”

  Her mother tapped her own chest. “It’s me, Rowan.” Then she put her hand on Rowan’s heart. “And it’s you. Just the same.”

  “Maybe a bit smaller than before?”

  Her mother smiled through her tears. “I was thinking how much you’d grown.”

  Rowan reached out to wipe a fresh tear from her mother’s cheek. She held her fingers against her mother’s skin to feel the warmth of her. Then she felt her mother’s body tense. Beyond the cavern came a noise.

  “Never a moment’s peace!” exclaimed Jack, breaking the spell.

  “Maybe, Jack, you could go and see what’s going on?” asked Rowan’s mother. Her voice sounded strained, not how Rowan remembered it at all.

  “What? Oh, I see. Sending me away. No Jacks wanted here.”

  He swept out of the cave. Rowan’s mother let out a long breath.

  “I’ve so much to tell you, Mom,” Rowan began.

  “I want to hear it all, Rowan,” her mother said, stroking her hair. “I want you to tell me everything. Everything I’ve missed . . .”

  “Yes, yes! There’s school, there are these girls that bully me a bit, and Dad, he’s, you know, he’s always in his head, but we’ve kept your chair in the same place, and I played your violin the other day, and Willow is really sweet but a bit of a pain, and, and . . .”

  Her mother may have been smiling, but Rowan could tell something was wrong.

  “How are they? Willow? And your dad?”

  “Dad really misses you, and I really miss you. We all miss you. . . .”

  “Are they . . . happy?”

  Rowan paused.

  “Willow . . . ,” she began, not knowing quite what to say. “She doesn’t really remember.”


  Her mother closed her eyes.

  “And Dad. He’s, well, he’s just not the same as he was. But you’ll see for yourself, Mom! I have your necklace. The Heart of Oak! We can go home. Together.”

  Rowan held out the wooden pendant and looped it over her mom’s head. Then she threw her arms tightly around her. The years they had spent apart melted to nothing. In their place rose a certainty that everything was going to be all right. Their family would be reunited and happy again. She looked up into her mother’s face.

  “I’m so glad you’re here, little one,” said her mother, but Rowan felt a flicker of doubt. Why wasn’t her mother smiling? “There’s so much I need to tell you, too.”

  Before she could carry on, Jack emerged from the shadows.

  “It’s your friends, Rowan,” he said. “The bird. Seems to be hurt.”

  • • •

  Rowan and her mother rushed to find Harold lying in a shallow rock pool carved from colored crystal. Female River Fairies swam around tending to the injured bird. A worried Aiken and Olor pulled Rowan into a hug. Rowan broke free and kneeled down to gently rest her hand on the robin’s head. He opened an eye.

  “Did you . . . find her?” he asked, forcing the words out.

  Rowan took her mother’s hand and drew her toward Harold.

  “She’s here. This is my mom.”

  Harold smiled and closed his eye again. Rowan looked up at her mother.

  “He just needs to rest,” her mother said quietly.

  “The bird will be fine here,” Jack said. “My River Fairies will look after him.” He came to stand between Rowan and her mother. “Come. It’s time to eat.”

  “What about the foxes?” asked Aiken. “They know we’re here.”

  Jack’s face clouded. “They’ve not found a way in for seven years,” he said quickly. “We don’t need to panic now.”

  Olor was bent over Harold, placing a pillow of moss beneath his head. She straightened up and raised her eyebrows at Rowan.

  “What do you think?” Olor asked.

  “He’ll be fine!” insisted Jack. Before Rowan could say anything, he was already striding out of the cave.