head in, or so he and the other lads said.’
Thirty years… Could it be true? She’d spent her whole life terrified of spriggans, and all the while they’d been practically extinct?
‘Then why are we still hiding underground?’ Ivy asked, rounding on her aunt. ‘If I only imagined what I saw, and my mother wasn’t taken by the spriggans after all-’
‘There are more dangers in the world than spriggans,’ said Betony, with a hard look at Nettle. ‘And good reason for our people to stay underground, even now. As for your mother… I would let that be, Ivy, if I were you.’
‘You think she left us,’ Ivy said, struggling to breathe. ‘Don’t you. You think my mother went away on purpose.’
‘I don’t know what became of Marigold when she left the Engine House that night,’ the Joan replied, unruffled. ‘She may indeed have been caught by the spriggans, for all I know.’ She rose and walked around the table. ‘But you will not bring her back by making yourself miserable — as I have told your father many times.’ She put her fingers under Ivy’s chin and tipped her face up. ‘You have been working too hard. It would do you good to get more rest. Let Mica and Cicely look after you for a change.’
I’m not sick, Ivy wanted to protest, but she’d heard the warning in her aunt’s tone: the discussion was over. And Nettle was holding the door open, in case she hadn’t taken the hint. Hiding her resentment, Ivy bowed her head. ‘Yes, my Joan.’
It wasn’t self-doubt that made Ivy pause halfway through her journey home and choose a different route. It was sheer stubbornness, and as she turned west into Tinners’ Row where Keeve and his family lived, Ivy clenched her fists in anticipation. She’d get to the bottom of this, never mind what Betony said; she’d prove she hadn’t been pranked, or imagining an enemy that wasn’t there.
‘Keeve!’ she shouted at his door, her knocks loud as a thunder-axe in the narrow tunnel. ‘Wake up! I need to talk to you!’
‘He’s not here,’ came the muffled reply.
Ivy was surprised. Last night Keeve had danced harder and drunk more piskey-wine than anyone else she knew; it didn’t seem possible that he’d recovered so quickly. ‘Where is he, then?’
The door creaked open and Keeve’s mother, Teasel, looked out, her face pinched with anxiety. ‘He didn’t come back last night. Hew’s gone looking for him.’
That was even more odd. Keeve had good reason to fear Mica’s wrath after that prank with the adder, but he liked a comfortable bed as much as anyone. ‘I’m sorry to trouble you, then,’ Ivy said. ‘But when Keeve gets back, would you let me know? I’ve got something of his I need to return, and-’
Teasel didn’t wait for her to finish. She gave a tightlipped nod, and shut the door.
‘He’s still not back,’ said Mica several hours later, as he returned to the cavern. ‘And they didn’t want the adder.’
By then it was night-time, and Ivy was brushing out Cicely’s hair before they went to bed. Not that any of them would be likely to sleep well, knowing Keeve was still missing.
‘So Hew couldn’t find him?’ Ivy asked as she gave Cicely’s hair a final stroke and started to braid it again. ‘Are they going to send out a search party?’
‘Two of them,’ Mica said shortly, heaving the adder back into the cold-hole. ‘Gem and Feldspar are leading the first, and Matt and I’ll be on the second. But I doubt it’ll be worth the trouble. He’s probably just gone off to town for a pint.’
‘You mean with the humans?’ asked Cicely, twisting around so eagerly that Ivy lost hold of her braid. ‘Do you really think so?’
‘It wouldn’t be the first time,’ Mica said. But Ivy could see the crease between his brows, and knew that he was more worried than he let on. And rightly so — Keeve might be reckless at times, but he’d never stayed away from the Delve this long before.
‘They’ve checked the milking barn, I suppose?’ Ivy asked. The piskeys kept no cattle, but one of the nearby human farmers did, and Keeve was an expert at coaxing the cows to give up a few extra pints for the piskeys. ‘The cows are bound to miss him, if nobody else does.’
She’d tried to make light of the situation for Cicely’s sake, but her little sister wasn’t fooled. ‘Do you think the spriggan took him?’ she asked in a small voice.
Mica’s eyes flicked to Ivy’s and then away. ‘What would a spriggan want with Keeve?’ he said. ‘He wasn’t carrying any treasure, and he’s far too tough to be good eating. Now off to bed with you, skillywidden.’ He tweaked Cicely’s nose and went out.
That was all the reassurance Cicely needed, and she went to sleep without so much as a whimper. Even Ivy managed to argue herself into a few hours’ rest, telling herself there’d surely be good news in the morning.
But the search parties found no sign of Keeve, and by the time another day had passed, even Mica stopped acting casual. The atmosphere in the Delve grew tense and the piskeys spoke in whispers, as though at a funeral. Gifts began to pile up in front of Hew and Teasel’s cavern.
And before long, Ivy’s story about the spriggan wasn’t a story any more. Mattock came to the door and apologised, his square face sober beneath his mop of rusty hair. Betony called Ivy back to the Joan’s chambers and questioned her again, this time without condescension. Cicely woke sobbing that a spriggan had come to get her, and when she found Mica pulling on his boots for the evening hunt, she clung to him and begged him not to go.
‘Don’t be such a pebble-head,’ he said in a gruff tone, prising her off. ‘I’ll be safe enough with Mattock at my back, and we can always jump down a hole at the first sign of trouble. Or run like rabbits, if it comes to that.’
It was the right thing to say to Cicely, who managed a wavering smile. But Ivy wasn’t so reassured. Mica might be lazy and given to boasting, but he was no coward; what he could do if a spriggan came after him and what he would do were two different matters. ‘Be careful,’ she said, as Mica headed for the door.
Two days ago, her brother would have rolled his eyes and told her not to be such an old auntie. Now he gave a sober nod, and left without another word.
‘Ivy! Wake up!’
What time was it? It surely couldn’t be morning. Ivy raised her head blearily from the pillow to find Mica stooping over her. ‘Ugh,’ she said, ‘you stink. What have you been doing?’
‘Guess,’ said Mica, wiping sweat off his brow and baring his teeth in a grin.
Ivy sat up, abruptly wide awake. ‘You found him?’ Alive, it would seem, or Mica wouldn’t look so pleased with himself. ‘Is he all right? Can he talk?’
Mica gave her an odd look. ‘After Mattock and I jumped on him and beat him senseless, I should say not. Why, did you want to question him? I’d leave that to the Joan, if I were you.’
‘ Beat him-’ For a moment Ivy was too shocked to speak. Then her sleep-addled brain caught up with her, and she understood. ‘You don’t mean Keeve.’
Mica gave a snort. ‘I wish,’ he said. ‘No, we didn’t find him, or at least not yet. We caught the spriggan.’ three
‘Won’t speak a word, I’m told. Just sits there with his ugly mouth shut, and stares.’ Keeve’s mother tugged a fresh coil of roving onto her shoulder, her drop spindle whirling as she spun the soft mass into yarn. Only someone who knew her well would have noticed the tremor in her hands.
‘Maybe he doesn’t know how to speak,’ piped up one of the younger girls from her seat on the rug. Teasel’s cavern was as cosy and well-furnished as any in the Delve, but not even she had enough chairs for twenty. ‘Has anyone ever heard a spriggan talk?’
I have, thought Ivy. But the memory of that soft, insinuating voice made her feel slimy all over, and it wasn’t as though he’d said anything useful. Teasel needed answers, not mockery.
‘Tch! You’d get more sense out of an animal,’ said another woman. ‘It’s useless, if you ask me — meaning no offence to you, Teasel,’ she added as Keeve’s mother bristled. ‘Of course we all want to see your lad safe home again. Only that I can’t see how that nasty creature down below is going to help us find him.’
‘Well,’ said Teasel, pinching the yarn tight between finger and thumb, ‘if the creature won’t give me back my son, then at least we can make him pay for it. That’s what I say, and Hew’s of the same mind. My man killed a spriggan all by himself once, you know. Stove its head in with his thunder-axe, and kicked its carcass into the sea.’
The other women exclaimed and sat up, eager for details, but Cicely edged closer to Ivy. ‘I don’t like it when
