Page 74 of Smoke & Ashes
Sadly, and selfishly, there wasn’t time to think about it. Not while there was still the more pressing issue that Elaine was out wandering the Lake District somewhere after dark and there might still be other servants of the King of Shadows, the Queen of Winter to contend with. And even if thereweren’tany, if Yelena and the knights had been it, she could still fall over a cliff and die.
Then again, we did have a secret weapon.
“So, Patrick,” I tried. “Don’t suppose your deep, abiding, and definitely never-ending connection to Elaine is giving you any indication of where she is right now?”
He made a set of movements that were uncomfortably like sniffing the air. “She is not in danger, and she is not afraid, but she is lost. I should go to her.”
“You do that. Just let us follow you.”
He bolted. Of course he bolted. I bolted after him, leading to this uncomfortably Benny-Hill-like chain of us crocodiling out of the fake castle and into the wilds of the Lake District, with Patrick heading off heedless of pursuit, me keeping up as best I could and the two undergraduates trailing behind.
This was a total recipe for getting lost, ambushed, or injured, but I couldn’t see that many ways around it.
Once or twice I thought I saw a giraffe through the trees. I almost convinced myself it was my imagination.
33
Rushes & Lions
Perhaps it was the dark, perhaps it was the relatively unspoilt countryside of a national park, perhaps it was the eerie silver mist that rolled off the lake, but things were feeling at least twenty percent more vision-questy than they had a few minutes ago.
And that wasbeforethe white doe and the four lions.
Patrick stumbled to a halt. “I can no longer feel her,” he said. He seemed genuinely shocked. It must have been weird for him, his my-woman-is-in-danger sense had been part of his whole deal for well over a century. Losing it must have been like going suddenly numb.
“Call it a hunch,” I told him, "but what do you say we follow the pack of heraldic beasts?”
Flick and Sofia brought up the rear, both of them out of breath. “Why,” Flick gasped., “Are there. Lions?”
“I’m about ninety-three percent certain that it’s a holy grail thing.”
That earned me a suspicious look from Patrick. “Elaine is a fragile and innocent girl. Why must you persist in imagining that she is some kind of mystical figure?”
“You mean apart from the fuckinglions?” I asked. “And your frankly spotless track record of dating young women with unknown magical powers?”
“Uh, Kate?” Sofia nudged me gently. “The animals are getting away.”
Oh right, the actual quest. Stupid mythic imperatives always getting in the way of a good argument. We set off after them, more slowly now because they were—I almost wanted to sayproceeding in state—and there was that woobly, dreamy vibe that so much high-end wizard stuff had going on.
We followed the weird menagerie down into a valley, where the doe lay down on a bed of rushes and the lions gathered around her. Then there was a fading and a shifting and a shimmer in the air, and the doe had become a girl who had to be Elaine, and one of the lions had become a dude I didn’t recognise at all, another had turned into an ox, another an eagle, and the last one had somehow managed to transform into a different lion.
Symbolism could go fuck itself.
“Be ye welcome,” said the unfamiliar dude. “Now wot I well ye—”
“Oh justshut up.” I should probably have been more diplomatic but I was beyond through with this shit. “I’ve had a really long, really strange week. I’ve fought a vampire, stabbed a faery, nearly frozen to death, and been read poetry by a surprisingly hot estate agent. All I want to do now is take this girl back to London so I can use her to hopefully try to bring my friend back from the not-exactly-dead. And I don’t need some prick in a robe talking medieval at me. And I don’t need signs or portents or omens. Now fuck off. Legitimately, seriously, fuck off and take your”—I waved my hands in a way that indicated the whole gathering of … things—“whatever this is with you.”
He gave me an oddly sincere look. “Shall I at least set my—”
Whatever he was about to suggest, I was beyond giving anything like a shit. “No. Get the fuck out of my head, life, and general vicinity.”
With which the guy who used to be a lion, the ox who used to be a lion, the eagle who used to be a lion, and the lion who used to be a lion—which I still didn’t understandat all—disappeared into the mist, leaving Elaine slowly stirring on the floor. I let Patrick go to her, because stopping him would have been borderline impossible.
Since she was all of sixteen, I let her get away with her first words on waking up being “where am I?”
“You are safe, Elaine,” Patrick told her. “Yelena came for us, but she is gone now.”
They embraced for longer than even bordered on necessary.
