“Arthur’s Seat got its name because people believe that to be where Camelot stood. It makes sense with the riddle.”
“Agreed,” I concede, “but it’s outdoors. Why would her hideout be on top of a hill?”
“She said something about a secret door and a narrow path,” Marley reminds me.
“She did,” I murmur. I look at him. “You really think—”
“I do,” he says soundly. “But the door will be Glamoured.”
“Yes. So, when do we—”
“Daylight,” Marley says, and I’m surprised by how resolute he sounds. “Tomorrow, we have to just go. If Mum or Aunt Opal try to stop us—”
“They won’t if we slip out before dinner,” I point out. “We’ll be on Blue and gone before they notice.”
“Aunt Opal knows we’ve been—”
“She doesn’t know everything, and she doesn’t know about Blue.”
“I’ll be in our cottage,” Alona tells us. “I have to… I have to tidy it up, for when he gets back. Knock on the door. I’ll come with you. I want to help.”
“You don’t want to stay by our house?” I ask.
“Oh, no,” she says hurriedly. “It’s all right. I want to be home.”
We watch her scamper away and, when she is almost out of sight, she transforms into a leaf and floats across the breeze. We sit in silence for a moment, my cheeks damp with frustrated tears.
“I want to go home, too,” I say, and he knows I mean Edinburgh.
“I know.”
“Marley?”
“Yes?”
“I,” I feel another sob lodged in my throat and I have to squeeze my eyes closed to hold back more tears. “I really do try, you know. I’m really trying.”
I feel his hand on my shoulder. “I know you are.”
When I flew for the first time, so long ago now, with Aunt Opal and the Kelpies and the river beneath me, I thought I was finally a natural at something. I thought a talent had finally come easy to me, that I would finally be able to do something without
constant practice.
The more I’ve allowed doubt to set in, the harder it has been to fly. I’ve told myself that my wings have just been clipped but, in reality, I’m just too afraid to use them.
*
“Aunt Opal?”
It’s noon the next day and she’s in Grandpa’s study. I knock on the door and poke my head in. She’s sitting cross-legged on top of his old writing desk, reading something. She glances up when I enter and smiles lightly. “Hey.”
“What’s that?” I ask, nodding at the book in her hands.
She looks down at it once more and her eyes soften. “One of Dad’s first attempts at a book on the
Hidden Folk.”
I move a little closer. “He always wished he could
see them.”
“Yeah, well,” she turns a page. “They mostly grew to like him so much that they would let down their Glamour on occasion. Not all of them, but some.”
“He was the best.”
“Yeah. But he could push. When he wanted results, when he had a vision in his head, he could overwork himself. And other people.”
I blink, unsure of how to respond. “He did?”
“Yes. Why do you think your Mum works so hard? Why do you think Aunt Leanna is so worried about Marley? And me. I’m… well. Me.”
“You push me hard,” I point out, not unkindly.
“I do. Because I know you can do better.”
I don’t know how to tell her that a compliment would make me work fifty times harder. I can’t express in this moment how much I need to feel like I’m doing well, in order for me to do better. I’m tired of playing the underdog, I’m tired of feeling like I have to fight my way out of every room and every situation. “Okay.”
We sit together in the dusty, bookish room without making a sound. I look at the photographs on his wall. I spot one that looks like me. One year old, sat on the kitchen floor with a plastic toy telephone. My pudgy little hand is holding the phone up to Aunt Opal and she is pretending to listen in to an imaginary caller on the other end. I’m looking up at her and laughing. Gran and Grandpa are in the background, smiling
