The Wren Hunt by Mary Watson

Author:Mary Watson
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781408884942
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2017-11-13T00:00:00+00:00

SEVENTEEN

But false

The Girl of Leaf and Petal is but a game and yet, in our preparation, there are moments when I glimpse an almost ancient truth. At times I feel that Elizabeth and I have stumbled upon something uncommon, whose power we cannot begin to fathom.

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‘Wren,’ Laney said. ‘There you are. You’re getting started on the archive today.’ She smiled at me, dimples showing. Apparently, hanging out at a hazel hedge after an attempted kidnapping was a bonding ritual with Laney.

‘No more journals?’ I was almost disappointed. I wanted to know more about the troubled girl in Lady Catherine’s garden books.

‘Don’t be silly. There are always journals. Now,’ she talked at me, ‘loads to do.’

She gave instructions while ushering me down the hallway to the basement. We found Tarc along the way and she gathered him too. She talked fast as she moved us to the staircase, explaining what needed to be done. I didn’t hear half of what she said.

Too quickly, Laney ended with, ‘So I’m sending in the muscle.’

She tilted her head at Tarc and turned away, her high heels loud on the marble.

‘Did you get any of that?’ I said to Tarc. His face was grazed, the skin on his temple a rich shade of mottled purple. So beautifully textured, it called to me, saying, Read me.

‘No.’

We went downstairs and he entered the code for the archive, the clicks beeping a little tune.

‘You know that it’s daft to have a keypad with key clicks that make different sounds, right? It’s like the keypad sings a tune.’

‘That would be daft,’ Tarc agreed amiably. ‘But this keypad doesn’t sing a tune. The key clicks are completely tuneless.’

‘It totally sings a tune.’

Tarc looked at me with exaggerated patience. He pulled the door shut and entered the code again.

‘See,’ he said, completely satisfied, as if there hadn’t been a distinct little tune to the clicks. I looked at him carefully to see if he was having me on.

‘I’ll do it.’ I pressed out the first line to ‘Mary Had a little Lamb’. Smug, I stepped back. ‘See?’ I mimicked him. Then looking at him sideways, ‘Unless, of course, you’re tone deaf?’

Tarc’s lips were twitching into a smile and he shook his head, the laugh escaping.

‘Is this your party trick? Do you hear voices beneath the microwave hum? The washing machine?’

‘You know, I haven’t tried them,’ I said, wondering. ‘But you heard this tune, right?’

‘You’re funny,’ he said, and I realised that he thought I was being playful. He hadn’t heard the tune. He couldn’t.

‘Right. Funny,’ I said, backtracking. I’d heard a tune as plain as day. ‘I’m hilarious.’

But I felt unexpectedly crushed. Just another wonky spiderweb. The key clicks all made exactly the same sound. Except to me. It was my spinny eye, but in audio.

‘So we change the code every week,’ Tarc was saying as we went inside.

Working in silence, I inventoried the unsealed boxes while Tarc stacked the high shelves. I wanted to ask him about totems. About magic and trees behaving strangely.

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