Mam began to fade and I called out desperately. ‘Please, Mam, don’t go yet. We need to talk some more. There’s got to be another way. This can’t be right! I can’t believe what you’re asking me to do!’
As she faded, she changed back into the fierce lamia with the feathered wings. The last thing I saw was her cruel eyes. Then she was gone.
The room was immediately plunged into darkness so, with shaking hands, I eased the tinderbox out of my pocket and managed to light the candle. Next I sat down on the floor beside the trunk and examined the tinderbox, turning it over and over in my hands. It had been the last thing Dad had given me when I left home to become John Gregory’s apprentice. I could see him now in my mind’s eye and I remembered his exact words:
I want you to have this, son. It might come in useful in your new job. And come back and see us soon. Just because you’ve left home, it doesn’t mean that you can’t come back and visit.
The tinderbox had certainly proved useful in my line of work and I’d used it many times.
Poor Dad! He’d worked hard on the farm but had not lived to enjoy his retirement. I thought back to the story of how he’d met Mam in Greece. Dad was a sailor then, and he’d found her bound to a rock with a silver chain. Mam had always been vulnerable to sunlight, and her enemies had left her to die on a mountainside. But Dad had saved her, shielding her from the sun.
Before sailing back to the County with her to begin his new life as a farmer, Dad had stayed at her house in Greece. Something he’d told me about his time there made sense now. Mam’s two sisters sometimes came after dark, and the three of them danced around a fire in the walled garden; he’d heard them arguing and thought that the sisters had taken against him: they used to glare at him through the window, looking really angry, and Mam would wave him away.
The two sisters were the lamias Wynde and Slake, who’d then been transported to the County hidden in Mam’s trunks. They continued to argue with her, and now I knew why. They had been trying to persuade her to strengthen the hobble on the Fiend by sacrificing Dad.
I was roused from my thoughts by the sound of someone coming up the steps into the storeroom. I realized that it was Slake, who no longer walked and moved like a human being. The sight of her in the flickering candlelight chilled me to the bone. Her wings were folded but her claws were extended, as if ready to attack me. Instead she smiled and I rose to my feet.
‘Has Zenobia spoken to you?’ she asked, her voice harsher than before. I had to concentrate hard to understand what she was saying.
‘Yes, but I don’t like what I’ve been asked to do.’
‘Ah! You mean the sacrifice. She said that it would be hard for you, but that you were a dutiful son and had the strength to do what was necessary.’
‘Strength and duty – they’re just words!’ I said bitterly. ‘Mam couldn’t do it; why should I?’
I stared at Slake, trying to control my anger. Had the lamia and her sister had their way, Dad would have died in Greece, and my brothers and I would never have been born.
‘Calm yourself,’ she said. ‘You need time to think – time to meditate upon that which must be done. And you cannot deal with the Fiend unless the third sacred object is in your possession. To find that must be your priority.’
‘That artefact lies in the dark – and, moreover, under the very throne of the Fiend,’ I responded, full of rage now. ‘How am I supposed to lay my hands on that?’
‘It is not you who must do it. We have another use for the girl. Alice has spent time in the dark already. Not only will she find it relatively easy to return there, she will be familiar with the Fiend’s domain. And so long as his head remains separated from his body, the danger will be much reduced.’
‘No!’ I shouted. ‘I can’t ask her to do that. After her first visit she almost lost her mind.’
‘The second one will be easier,’ insisted Slake. ‘She will gradually become immune to the adverse effects.’
‘But at what cost?’ I retorted. ‘By becoming closer and closer to the dark until she belongs to it entirely?’
The lamia did not reply. Instead she reached into the trunk and handed me a piece of paper. ‘Read this first,’ she said. ‘It is written in my hand but was dictated to me by your mother.’
I accepted the paper, and with shaking hands began to read:
Mam then went on to repeat what I already knew – how she’d been bound to a rock with a silver chain and rescued by a sailor. That sailor had been Dad, of course – he’d told me the story not long before he died. I knew the rest of it too – how Dad had been given shelter in her house. But her next words chilled me to the bone.
I felt a pain in my heart at those words. I thought Mam and Dad had loved each other from the beginning. Dad had made it sound that way, anyway. It was what he’d believed. I had to force myself to keep on reading.
Thinking of poor Dad, I stifled a sob. There was no mention of love here. All Mam seemed to care about was destroying the Fiend. Dad was just a means to achieving that end. Maybe that’s all I was too?
I glanced up from the sheet of paper and glared at Slake, who extended her claws in anger at my reaction. This was one of the two lamias who had argued that Dad should be killed! I continued reading.
The end of the letter made me feel a little better. At least Mam was saying now that she’d loved Dad. She’d gradually changed and become more human. I gave a sudden shiver, realizing that now the opposite was true: she was leaving her humanity behind and had evolved into something very different to the mother I remembered. What she was asking was unthinkable.
‘Mam said she held two sacred objects,’ I told Slake. ‘Why is the second one of those now in the dark?’
‘Do you think it was easy to hobble the Fiend?’ she hissed, once more extending her talons. She opened her mouth very wide, showing me her teeth, and saliva began to drip from her jaws. For a moment I thought she intended to attack me, but then she slowly let out her breath and continued to speak.
‘There was a great struggle despite Zenobia’s magic. The Fiend snatched up one of the objects as he was hurled back into the dark. These are Zenobia’s instructions for the ritual . . . Read them now!’ she commanded, handing me a second piece of paper.
I took it, folding it and putting it in my pocket. ‘I’ll read it tomorrow,’ I said. ‘I’ve already learned too many things that aren’t to my taste.’