one was watching. Then, quick as a blink, she disappeared.
Timothy jumped, heart jarring against his rib cage, and then he heard a high-pitched voice coming from around knee level, “Look under the table.”
Dry mouthed, he leaned sideways and peered under the table’s edge to see a tiny version of Linden sitting across from him, balanced on the edge of the plastic seat. Spread out behind her back were a pair of delicate- looking translucent… wings?
“Have you seen enough now?” she demanded.
Numbly, Timothy nodded.
“Is anybody looking at us?”
He shook his head.
Immediately Linden flashed back into view on the other side of the table, human-sized and wingless again. She looked tired but triumphant. “So now you have to believe me. Right?”
Timothy grabbed a forkful of chips, just to have something to do with his hands and his mouth while he struggled for composure. When he tried to speak again his voice sounded squeaky, and he had to clear his throat: “Do they know that you’re a…er, I mean, Paul and Peri, if you know them, have they ever…”
“Of course they know,” said Linden. “The woman you call Peri-she used to be a faery herself.”
That was it, he was going insane. Timothy pushed his chips away. “I have to go.”
Linden caught his arm. “It’s the truth, I swear. She started out as our Hunter, back when she was just a little older than me, and we called her Knife…well, we still call her that, actually, even though she’s a human now and goes by her true name of Perianth instead. But anyway, she met Paul and they fell in love, and in the end Queen Amaryllis made her human so she could stay with him, but she had to promise to go on hunting food for us and protecting us from the crows as her part of the bargain. That’s why she looked sad when you were talking about Uganda. She knows she can never travel, never even leave the Oakenwyld for more than an hour or two, so long as the rest of us need her.”
So she’d overheard their conversation at the dinner table as well? “How long have you been spying on me?” Timothy demanded.
A flush crept into Linden’s cheeks. “Since you came to the House, off and on. I know I shouldn’t have, but you were young like me, and I saw the way you looked at the Oak, and…” She played with her straw. “I wanted to find out more about you. What things you liked or needed, if there was anything that I might be able to offer you as a bargain…I had to know if there was any chance you might take me away with you when you left.”
Oh. He understood now-or thought he did. “The Oak is where you live?” he said. “You and your Queen and… the rest of you?”
She nodded.
That explained a lot, thought Timothy. He went on, “Okay, so you wanted to see some more of the world. I get that. But what about your parents? Aren’t they going to be upset that you just took off with me?”
“Parents.” She ran the word around her tongue as though it were unfamiliar. “I don’t have any parents.”
Whoops. He should have guessed she was an orphan, with those worn-looking clothes and tangled hair. That must be why Paul and Peri had been concerned about her. “Sorry,” he said.
“Why should you be?” Now she looked confused. “No one in the Oak has parents, because there aren’t any male faeries. Knife is my foster mother-well, one of them, anyway. She looked after me when I first hatched.”
Hatched? thought Timothy in disbelief, but Linden was still talking: “But that’s not the point. I didn’t come with you because I wanted to see the world. I came with you to try and find more faeries. Because my people have lost their magic, and we need to get it back.”
Over the next few minutes Linden did her best to make Timothy understand about Jasmine and the spell she had cast on the Oakenfolk, and how vital it was that their people’s magic be restored. “There are only a few of us left now,” she said, “and if it weren’t for Knife and the Queen there’d be even fewer. We’re so afraid of being eaten by crows and foxes that most of us won’t set foot outside the Oak unless we have to. But now there’s even more for us to worry about, because the Queen is dying-and though she gave me a half share of her power, I can’t cast the glamours that protect the Oak nearly as well as she used to. We’ll never be safe, or free, until all of us have our magic back.”
“So why don’t you find this Jasmine and get her to undo the spell, then?” said Timothy around another mouthful of chips. Linden had tried one but didn’t like it, so he was finishing off the box by himself-though how he could eat so much and still be so thin, she couldn’t imagine.
“Because we can’t,” Linden replied. “It’s been nearly two hundred years since Queen Amaryllis turned Jasmine into a human and exiled her from the Oak, so she’s long dead by now. And anyway, she’d never have done it. If she was crazed enough to think it worth using up all our magic just to keep us away from humans, do you really think she’d be likely to change her mind?”
“Fair enough,” said Timothy. “So you think the faeries here will help you?”
“I don’t know,” Linden said. “I’d hoped so, but after the way Veronica behaved to you, tricking you into seeing her as someone you trusted, and then trying to take your music…” The memory of the other faery bending over Timothy, that hungry light in her eyes, still made Linden shudder.
“I still don’t get that part.” Timothy swirled his drink around with the straw. “How could she steal music from me? Why would she want to?”
Linden sighed. “You have to understand. We faeries aren’t creative, like you humans are. On our own, we can’t make art or music, or come up with new ideas-we have to learn all those things from you. But at the same time, having faeries close by makes humans more creative, so it works both ways. Or at least it’s supposed to.”
“But…?” prompted Timothy.
“Well, it’s also supposed to happen gradually. But last night, when Veronica dragged you off to play for her…it didn’t. Even shut up in that locker, I could hear. I could tell.”
Timothy looked down at his reddened fingers. “So she did that,” he said. “She made me-”
“She pushed you,” said Linden. “Forced all your musical ability to the surface, so she could take it for herself. I didn’t even know that was possible.”
“I’ve never played like that in my whole life.”
She touched his arm, trying to reassure him. “I won’t let her do it again.”
Timothy did not reply. He sat back against the bench, his eyes unreadable. “So now what?” he said.
“I have to try and find some good faeries,” Linden said. “Ones who will listen to what I have to say, and care enough to want to help-or at least be willing to bargain.”
Timothy studied her a moment. Then he said, “Well, good luck with that, I guess,” and began to slide out from behind the table.
“Wait!” she said. “Where are you going?”
“To find another hostel. I’m tired.”
“But what if Veronica finds you again? And I need your help!”
“I don’t know what for,” he said. “I gave you a ride here, and you got me away from Veronica, so it looks like we’re even. If you need to get back to the Oak, just buy a train ticket to Aynsbridge.”
“But I haven’t any money-”
“Why would you need it? You’ve got this ‘glamour’ thing: You can probably conjure up a few pounds.”
“I can’t do that,” protested Linden. “It would be stealing.” Use your gifts wisely and in good conscience, Amaryllis had told her, not for selfish gain. “And anyway, I don’t want to go back, not until I’ve found the help I need.” She clutched at Timothy’s sleeve. “Please don’t go. There’s so much I still don’t know about your world. And I can help you, too, if you give me the chance.”
For a moment Timothy still hesitated. Then he heaved a sigh and slumped back down onto the bench. “Oh, all right,” he said. “Sure you don’t want some chips?”
“Closing up,” announced the boy with the mop, and quickly Timothy drained the rest of his Coke, willing the sugar and caffeine to spark through his exhaustion, keep him going just a little while longer.
“Come on,” he said to Linden. “We’d better find somewhere to sleep.”
“Let me go first,” she said, springing up from the booth. She peered out the window into the street, then
