Modern Magick

The Wonders of Vale: 5

Ashdown Castle was gone.

Believe me, I checked thoroughly. I don't know where I thought Zareen might have managed to hide a huge medieval castle-manor on an open beach, but I trawled up and down the sand anyway, twice over, before I was prepared to concede that it really wasn't there.

This was good, for it meant (hopefully) that Zareen had succeeded in finding a better, permanent home for the place. Considering its weight, it really shouldn't have been left any longer on sandy ground.

It was bad because that meant Zareen and George were nowhere within reach.

So much for our easy (maybe) link to Miranda.

We made a slightly forlorn group for a moment there, Emellana and Jay and Adeline and I, faced with the utter absence of an entire castle, and our friends with it.

Well, Jay and I did. Adeline attempted to eat a crab, and swiftly regretted it. Emellana maintained an enigmatic silence.

'I suppose Melmidoc might know something,' I offered, half-heartedly.

'Do you think Zareen was much in contact with him?' said Jay.

'Not really.' Zar wasn't the type for dutiful check-ins, especially with someone she would consider wholly uninvolved with her business, and therefore irrelevant. 'But it's somewhere to start. Even if he doesn't know, he can help. I mean, where would Miranda go, if she'd stayed here?'

'Wherever the rarest magickal beasts are,' said Jay promptly.

'Right. And Melmidoc would know that, for sure.'

'You are trying to find a colleague?' said Emellana.

I grimaced. 'Ex-colleague.'

Emellana's raised brow invited elucidation, which I provided. It made for a surprisingly brief story.

'Why do you need her?' said Emellana, gazing thoughtfully over the sea.

'We don't,' I said, with a ferocity that surprised even me.

Jay gave a slight cough. 'Milady insisted upon it.'

'And you always do what Milady requires.'

'Not... always,' honesty compelled me to admit. 'But mostly. And she is right about Miranda's expertise. If we find griffins or unicorns, we may be glad of her presence.' Maybe.

Emellana said nothing. Her silence proved more eloquent than any counter-argument might have been.

I watched her for a moment. Her serenity was... slightly unnerving. I mean, here we were on the mythical fifth Britain, a place even the Court at Mandridore had known nothing about until recently. A place overflowing with magick, brimming with all the lost arts and artefacts and beasts we could only dream of. I was itching to get off the isle of Whitmore, at last, and explore what lay on the mainland beyond the sea. Jay, I knew, was feeling the same.

Emellana Rogan, however, was... unimpressed. She stared out over the sea as though it were just a sea, any sea, and not teeming with magick and probably full of selkies and mermaids and naiads and... ooh, what if there were mermaids down there?

There could be.

'Jay! Do you think there are mermaids in those waters?' I said.

He gave me the side-eye. 'No idea. Let's pop down and check.' He started to remove his boots.

I grabbed his arm. 'Not now. Later.'

His eyes grew wide. 'You're actually serious.'

'Weren't you? Oh.' Abashed, I folded my arms, and attempted to mimic Emellana's cool, wordless stare over the water. A balmy sea-breeze blew back my hair. 'I knew that.'