8

8

M y visit home started when nobody came to meet me at the station.

I had known this might happen, and that it would be nobody's fault if it did. Our farm is a good hour's walk from the nearest train station, or half that on the rattling motorcycle that Matthew bought last year from an army friend who swore it wouldn't break down every five minutes (it broke down every ten). In her last letter, Mum had promised they would try to be there. Sometimes, though, no amount of coaxing or minor spellcraft would get the motorcycle running, sometimes emergencies cropped up on the farm and neither Mum nor Matthew could get away, sometimes the road was blocked by ice or flooding or mud or the old farm horse was needed for work. I'd told her not to worry—if there was nobody at the station, I'd just walk home and it wouldn't matter a bit. I meant it. Still, I couldn't help the eager leap of my heart as the train slowed approaching the platform, nor its subsequent plummet back to its proper place when the platform was empty. It wasn't only that I had truly longed to see everyone. It was snowing lightly outside, and the station platform was hard and glittering white.

Well, there was nothing for it. I hauled my book-heavy suitcase off the platform, winced at the wet crunch as it fell, pulled my coat tighter about me with my free hand, and started to walk. At least I'd had the sense to wear my old boots, not the soft grey suede pair Hero had given me for my birthday.

It felt strange to pick my way down the old familiar road, as though I was walking backwards into childhood. It's hard, wild, unforgiving country: On that day, covered as they were in grey wet snow, the roads and stone walls and dark brick houses looked carved by force from the surrounding landscape. In the distance the great flat tabletop of Pendle Hill stood draped in white—the hill where twelve men and women had been accused of witchcraft in the Lancaster Assizes, and which even now felt steeped in a brooding power different to any taught at Camford. I walked through the village, shut up against the winter cold, across the bridge under which the river flowed sluggishly, onto the foot track that followed the great stone wall home. I tried to use a charm to lighten my suitcase, but the hand gestures were precise and my frozen fingers made the result unpredictable—the thing abruptly doubled in weight as I tried to pull it over a stile, and I slipped in an undignified heap on the frozen ground. My newly assured Camford self seemed to shrivel and flake away with every step.

But it was only the walk home, after all. After an hour or so, as the sky was getting dark, I sighted the familiar row of beech trees that stood guard at the edge of our land. Soon, there was our house, small and dark and shivering against the leaden sky. Someone inside had obviously been keeping a watch for me. The door opened before I had a chance to knock, and I was hit by two firm, sturdy little bodies.

"Clover!" Iris flung her arms around me, her hands frozen and her cheeks still pink from the wind. She and Little John behind her would have walked the same road back from school only half an hour before.

"Hello, you two!" I let my trunk fall and dropped to my knees to hug them tightly, and the cold outside melted from my chest. Whatever else I had felt about home, I had missed them so much. "Look at you. You've grown!"

"We were going to come meet you," Mum said, and I looked up to see her tiny figure standing in the hallway in a flour-streaked apron. She didn't smile often these days, but the lines around her eyes softened as I got to my feet. "That useless motorcycle died again this morning, of course, but our Matthew said he'd get it working again or take the horse. Then one of the sheep fell down a gully by the brook. Matthew had to go and get it out—he's been there all afternoon. Marigold and Holly had to get the rest in on their own. And I didn't like to take the horse out in this weather, even if I could have left the little ones."

"You didn't have to come meet me." I returned her brisk hug. I'd forgotten what it was like at home. Everything had to be fine, always, even when it was falling around our ears. "It was a good walk, even with the snow."

"No rain at the moment, that's one good thing," Mum said. If there had been rain, it would have been good fortune there wasn't mist, or sleet, or a tidal wave. "We've made your old bed up for you with Mary and Holly. Go get out of those wet things, and tea should be ready by the time you come down. You're looking pale. Don't they feed you in that place?"

"Not like here," I said, because it was what Mum wanted to hear. In fact, she was the one who looked startlingly gaunt, as though the wind outside had whittled the flesh from her bones.

Iris and Little John were only waiting for Mum to release me. They pounced on me at once and dragged me upstairs, where I barely had time to change before they were showing me three months' accumulated drawings and pressed leaves and stones. Mary and Holly were equally excited once they came in from the shed, though Mary didn't squeal as she would have only last year. I was startled when I looked at her to see not a little girl but a young woman of fifteen, her gold hair pinned up experimentally, her face losing its childish roundness.

"You look so grown-up," I said inadequately.

She looked faintly self-conscious, though pleased. "I'm the eldest daughter at home now," she said, in a voice that strained too hard for nonchalance. "People look at you different."

"Peter Brooks looks at her different," Holly said slyly, and she and Iris erupted into giggles while John rolled his eyes with the disgust only a seven-year-old could muster.

"No!" I sounded half-delighted, half-horrified, and in truth I didn't know which was closer to what I felt. "Mary, you're not walking out with Peter Brooks?"

"Not really ," she said, feigning reluctance, drawing the last word out to at least four syllables. "Mum says not until I'm sixteen. He drives me into town sometimes, though, when I go to work at the tea-shop, and sometimes he leaves me flowers when he comes to help with the chores."

I smiled, and wondered at the odd pang I felt at the news. It wasn't that I envied her Peter Brooks—he was a kind lad, a year younger than me, and I had him marked down as the farmer sort with strong hands and not a startling thought in his head. Perhaps it was discomfort to see my sisters settle for life at Pendle Hill, when I felt they could do so much more; perhaps it was guilt that Peter Brooks and my sisters were doing the work for the farm that should have been mine; perhaps, less charitably, there was even an edge of resentment. When I had been their age, the world had been at war. All my spare thoughts and worries had been for the great armies crashing across Europe and our brother and his friends caught in their teeth. I had been clinging to a wreck in a storm, certain any moment that everything would go down forever. I had never had any time or care for the kind of things they were talking about. I could have them now if I wanted them, of course. I wasn't part of Matthew's generation, only a few years ahead, whose youth had been snatched away and would never come back. But still.

"What about you, Clover?" Holly said, with the same sidelong look at Mary. "You're well past sixteen now. Are any of those lords at Camford walking out with you?"

"Or any you want to?" Iris put in.

"Don't be daft," I scoffed. I tried not to think of Alden pulling close to read over my shoulder in the library, Eddie waiting for me in the frost on the night of my birthday, Hero's hand gripping mine and leading me through the glitter of the Illusion. Their friendship was too good to ruin with all that. "I'm far too busy. I'm there to be a scholar, not somebody's wife."

"Can't you be both?" Mary asked, genuinely curious.

I was spared having to answer by Mum's voice calling from the kitchen. "Tea's ready!"

It was toad-in-the-hole with mashed potatoes and peas and gravy, the kind of food that wouldn't have got within a mile of Camford and which unexpectedly brought tears to my eyes. The batter was golden and crisp, the sausages hot and salty, the peas tiny bursts of sweetness alongside the creamy potato. Suddenly I was eight years old again, having my favourite food for my birthday, and the university seemed years in the future and miles from home.

Matthew finally made it back as we were scraping our plates clean and Little John was begging for seconds. I heard the creak of the door and the loud, excited bark of our border collie, then my brother came into the kitchen with Shep at his side, both breathless and triumphant and soaked to the skin.

"The sheep?" Mum asked quickly.

"Safe and well." He took his hat off and ruffled his damp hair. "I put her in the barn to get warm. That's one we're not losing this winter, at least. Speaking of numbers, am I miscounting or do we have an extra here?"

"Our Clover's back!" Iris shouted helpfully, and I jumped up to embrace him. The memory came to me unbidden of his return from the war nearly two years before, when the train had pulled up at the station and we had seen him get off, pale and worn and unfamiliar in his uniform. Perhaps the same memory had come to him, because he tightened his grip on me before he pulled back. He was thinner than I remembered, and there were new lines at the corners of his eyes when he smiled.

"All right?" he asked, and I nodded, pushing my glasses back straight on my nose.

"Better than you," I informed him. Shep was jumping at me, whining excitedly; I ruffled her muddy ears. "You're wet through."

"What, this isn't how they dress for dinner at Camford?"

"Only on Sundays."

"I'd best get dried off, then. Don't go anywhere before I get back, yeah?"

"I've saved your tea in the oven for you," Mum said.

"Good! I'm starving." He looked more than starving, or wet through. He looked tired to his very bones, and once more guilt wrung my insides like a wet dishcloth. I remembered unwillingly what Eddie had said about the curse entwining its way toward his heart.

I could help, I reminded myself firmly. I had the Brackenbury counter-curse to try tonight, and if that failed, I could find others. I hadn't abandoned my family for my own ambitions. It would help them, in the end.

It was difficult to remember that here, though. Camford seemed like something out of a storybook. Part of me was already wondering how I had ever survived there. The other part was already longing to go back.

I didn't get a chance to speak to Matthew alone until after dinner. Last thing at night had been my favourite time on the farm, when I was a child before the war. The younger ones would be in bed, the animals would be fed and settled, Dad would be smoking his pipe by the fire, and Mum would be sitting across from him doing a last bit of sewing. Her face would be softer somehow, relaxed from its determined lines. I would make four mugs of tea, set two down on the little table beside Mum, and take the other two out to where Matthew was finishing up at the barn. It would be very quiet as I followed the little track through the field—in summer there would still be glimmers of light on the horizon and the soft rustle of tree leaves and birdsong.

Now, though Mum still sat sewing by the fire, there were only three mugs of tea to make, and her face softened only a little as she nodded her thanks. The fields outside were pitch-black. As I picked my way through, the rain was spitting cold drops from the sky, and the wind snatched at my skirt and whipped my hair about my ears.

But Matthew was still there, forking the hay down from the loft to the sheep penned up below while Shep tried to snatch it playfully out of the air. He looked up at me with a smile as I slammed the door shut behind me, and for a second I had a glimpse of what it might have been like had neither of us ever gone away.

"Those both for me?" he called out.

"No, one's for me and one's for Shep," I returned. "But she doesn't want hers, so you'll have to have it. Here."

I passed the mugs up to him first—we could just manage if he reached down and I stood on tiptoes—then scrambled up the ladder to join him. It was a good thing I had changed into my old woollen skirt before dinner—I don't think I would have made it in my new one, not without snagging the fabric on wood chewed ragged by livestock.

"I put them under my shawl so the rain wouldn't fall in them," I said, taking my mug back.

"Don't you have magic for that now?"

I screwed up my nose at him. "It's too strong for a little thing like that. It would shatter the mugs."

"We can't have that." He sat down beside me with a wince he couldn't quite hide, letting his feet hang out over the barn. "Magic never seems to get it right, does it? It's either too small or too big."

"Or maybe we're the ones who are too small or too big."

"Maybe we are," he conceded, and though that remark shouldn't have meant very much, I heard something lying beneath it. I saw the light flicker and die in his eyes and his face go quiet. I'd forgotten, or tried to forget, how that had started happening since the war. I hated it. It was like watching him go away again even while I looked at him.

"Matty?" I said, hesitant, and he blinked as if coming out of a dream.

"Mm?"

"Have things been all right here? I mean… did you get through the tupping season? Is there enough feed for the winter?"

Matthew raised his eyebrows, back and teasing again. "Did the farm fall down without you, you mean? We managed fine. And if the lambing goes well, we might be able to hire someone next year." He must have seen something in my face. "What?"

I looked away, flushed. "Nothing."

In truth, seeing my brother for the first time in months, I was shocked by how young he was. He had been an adult to me when we had parted, a returned soldier, experienced and sure. Now he had shifted, the way my vision clarified every morning when I put on my spectacles, and I could see that he was barely twenty-three—younger than Everett Dalrymple, or most of the postgraduates. And yet his face was already so much older. At dinner I had seen the way it stilled into tense, preoccupied lines when he thought nobody was looking, the way the last six years had engrained themselves around his eyes. The old curse marks peeked from his collar, inflamed around the edges by the wind and the cold. Surely they hadn't crept quite so far up his jawline before I had gone away.

"Is it getting stronger?" I asked bluntly. "The curse."

"No. I don't think so." His surprise was just a little too defensive. "Why do you ask?"

I didn't want to tell him what Eddie had said. "You're not fooling me, you know. It's been hurting you all evening."

At least he didn't bother to deny it. "It's been a long day, that's all. And there's another midnight coming soon. It always plays up a bit then." I must have looked sceptical, because he sighed. "Stop worrying! I told you, we've all been managing while you're away."

"Still," I said, "there's something I'd like to try. Do you mind if I…?"

He frowned but obligingly held still as I reached out for the withered mark on his neck. (Birch. I was sure of it now.) I pulled down the collar just enough to find a purchase for my fingers, then I gathered my thoughts, closed my eyes, and whispered the words from Brackenbury. The spell recognised the curse mark at once. An electric shiver rushed to my fingertips; a prickle of cold swept across my skin, like a sudden spring shower.

Beneath my touch, Matthew felt it too. His breath caught with a shiver of his own, then released in a very faint sigh. When I opened my eyes, though, my heart sank.

"It didn't work." I dropped my hand, frustrated, flicking my fingers to shake off the tingling. "That's a different counter-curse. Sometimes it's more effective than the one Sam used. I hoped… But I suppose you were struck too long ago now anyway. I'm sorry."

"It's all right." I don't know how disappointed he was. Perhaps he really had managed not to have any hope at all, as he'd claimed. He had always been a natural optimist, though, and I don't see how he could have helped but hope a little. "Thanks for trying."

I brushed this off. It was so far short of what I'd meant that tears pricked my eyes. "Perhaps I shouldn't go back in the new term."

"For God's sake. Where is all this coming from?"

"Well…" I gestured to the dark barn, where the sheep and our old horse munched their hay contentedly beneath the sound of the rain on the roof. "Look at this place. I should be here to help, not running around playing with magic."

He laughed, affectionate, just a little bitter. "Clove, you hate this place. You always have. All you've wanted all your life is to get out."

That stung, whether he meant it to or not. "It isn't all I've wanted. I want all of you to be safe and happy, more than anything. Besides, you wanted to get out of this place too."

"Well," he said. "I did, didn't I?"

I didn't know what to say. I never did, on the rare occasions he alluded to the years he had spent away from us. It was one of the many things I hated about the way my brother had come home. I used to know his every mood, as he knew mine. I had known when he needed to be pushed into admitting what was bothering him; he had known when I needed to be teased out of dwelling on what bothered me. I had known what would make him laugh, what would infuriate him, what would fire his eyes with sudden mischief. Now, too often, he became a stranger in front of my eyes. There was a vast chasm between his experiences and mine, and I feared that going away to Camford had widened it still further.

"I just don't want to let you down," I said feebly.

"You're not letting us down, you clod." He looked at me, and his voice softened. "Are you happy at Camford?"

"Yes." I didn't need to think about that, not even for a moment. "It's wonderful."

"Then stay there. I mean that. Don't listen to Mum."

I didn't need to ask what Mum had been saying. "She's right, though. You need my help here."

"You know what helps? Whatever happens, you're happy where you are. I won't have to worry this winter that you're cold or hungry or miserable; I don't have to feel that your future depends on me pulling this stupid farm through the next year or five years or ten years. You took care of that yourself, because you're hardworking and you're clever and you never gave up. So don't ever feel like you're letting us down, all right? We're proud of you."

I'd never heard Matthew say anything like that to me before. We loved each other dearly, that was understood, but our usual means of expressing it was to give each other a shove and call each other idiots. I didn't quite know how to respond to it now. Mixed in with pleasure and embarrassment was a vague foreboding, as though he might be on his deathbed. My eyes burned hot, and all I could do was nod soundlessly and hope my face wasn't doing anything too foolish.

"Besides, you're working twice as hard while you're back to make up for being away," he added, in something more like his usual voice. "Aren't you? Wasn't that the agreement?"

My own voice found its usual tracks as well. "Oh? I don't remember that."

"Well, I'm afraid I do. It's a shame, with all the snow coming this week, but there's nothing for it."

I shoved him and dodged the hay he threw back at me, which gave me a perfect chance to dash my sleeve across my eyes when he wasn't looking. He knew, of course, but at eighteen, I could pretend.

"I wish you could come to Camford too," I said. "Even just for a visit."

"Really?" He gave me a knowing look. "You're telling me you wouldn't be ashamed to be seen with a peasant farmer from the back of beyond, who drops h s left, right, and centre and doesn't know how to turn base metal into gold?"

"Don't be daft! Never." Yet some treacherous part of my brain flashed me a picture of Matthew shaking hands with Alden, and the incongruity of it made me want to look away, uncomfortable. It wasn't just that I'd be ashamed of my brother, or for him. In some strange way, I'd be ashamed of Camford too.

He let me off the hook, sort of. "I'm just glad you came home for Christmas. I did wonder, when I got some of your letters."

"Of course I came home," I scoffed.

I didn't tell him, because I couldn't quite bring myself to think it, that I was afraid it could no longer feel like home at all.

That feeling never entirely went away. On the surface, I slipped back easily enough into the old routines, the hurried daylight hours of meal-making and stock-feeding and childcare. My siblings were genuinely happy to have me back, and I was no less happy to see them. But the new distance between us wouldn't close. Everything felt temporary—my suitcase still unpacked, the books from Camford ready and waiting on my desk, my new London clothes folded and ready to be worn back. It was strange: While I'd been at Camford, home had seemed a distant dream. And yet at home, when Camford should have seemed the same distance apart, everything reminded me of it.

Everything reminded me of Alden and Hero and Eddie, everything and anything at all. I missed them desperately—the more so because they were my only line now to the magical world. I wrote to them every few days and haunted the post in the mornings for their reply. Fortunately, they seemed to miss me too. Most days brought at least one letter, sometimes two: Hero's beautiful curling script, stuffed with parties and books and gossip indiscriminately; Eddie's round serious handwriting, the envelopes stuffed more literally with cuttings and pressed flowers from his family's greenhouse; Alden's hasty scrawl, flickering between whimsical nonsense and flashes of serious research. When those letters were before my eyes, the world brightened into candlelit libraries and firelit gatherings, and the pang when I lowered them to our flat grey farm under snow hurt more every time.

How is your brother? Hero asked as December drew on. I was thinking of him, with the solstice approaching. I'm still annoyed that the Brackenbury didn't work, but perhaps you'll find it will have made a difference to the midnights. I'll keep looking in the British Museum while I'm here—it will be a merciful distraction from a parade of the dullest young men in creation, all of whom have been visiting the house lately, courtesy of my father. Do let me know how Matthew fares.

I held off on replying to that letter longer than usual. I had some excuse—the next midnight was only days away, as Hero had said, and it made sense to wait. The truth was, the more time I spent at home, the more painfully clear it was that Eddie's warning had been right. Matthew's curse was growing, and it was taking him.

It wasn't just that the wound in his shoulder was hurting him more every day. He always had an excuse for that—the cold, the damp, the work we'd done earlier that morning. It was the way his smile would fade and he would withdraw into himself when his concentration lapsed, at times too deep for the sound of his own name to recall him. It was the way I would hear him pacing in the attic above my room all night, unable or unwilling to fall asleep; the way he would doze off by the fire in the evenings only to start awake as if at a gunshot. It was the way I would look at him sometimes and see with a chill the green-speckled glint of something else looking back. It terrified me.

It's difficult to heal properly , Eddie had said, those few weeks ago. My grandfather always said the only sure way was to bargain with another faerie.

I was beginning to fear he may be right. That if Matthew were ever to be well again, my only chance was for us to persuade the Families to eventually lift the Accord—and even then, it may be too late.

The next midnight was a few days before Christmas, on the winter solstice. The sun was due to set around four that afternoon, but it was only a little after three before Matthew faltered and caught himself against the fence we had been mending.

"I'm all right," he assured me, breathless and distracted. He dashed a gloved hand across his eyes as if clearing them of fog. "I'd best get inside, though. It's starting."

The first midnight I had seen had started after dark. I hadn't noticed the incremental shift earlier every time—or if I had, I had attributed it to the seasons changing. There was no doubt now I was watching for it. The enchantment was swifter, hungrier, more eager. By the time we got to Matthew's room in the attic, it was nearly too late. He collapsed onto the bed, shaking, and Mum tied the knots while I quickly performed the binding spells.

"Thanks," Matthew said, through gritted teeth. He squeezed my hand briefly before I pulled away, and I returned it. "Promise me you won't open the door, all right? I mean it."

I don't know how he had guessed that was exactly what I had been intending to do. I wanted to learn more, to report back to my friends, to see if there was anything that made more sense after our research. But I had forgotten how horrifyingly real this was. The magic at Camford was human magic, carefully regulated, even the pranks and student excesses steeped in tradition. This was wild and uncanny and dark, and it wanted to hurt. I nodded, and he found the faintest twitch of a smile.

"I'm glad you're here," he said quietly, and then his eyes flickered green, he twisted away with a cry, and I flinched back on instinct.

Mum took my hand. "Come on," she said, unusually gentle, and I let myself be pulled away.

The screams started quickly after the door was locked and didn't relent until the morning sun was well over the horizon.

I wrote to Hero that night, telling her in the calmest possible terms that I had seen another midnight and I was seriously concerned. I perhaps wasn't as calm as I imagined.

I am more determined than ever to visit Lady Winter's at the first opportunity , I finished. Wish me luck, will you?

Her answer came by telegram the very next day. Good luck!