Page 32 of Fiendish Delights
We circled around the tree and inspected it carefully. ‘If the treasure is here, presumably it’s buried beneath the tree,’ Slimsaid. We all frowned at the ground; if that were the case, it would take careful engineering to retrieve it.
‘Or it could be concealed through magic,’ Becky suggested.
‘And unless we know what that original magic entails,’ Rizwan contributed, ‘we’ll struggle to uncover it.’
‘We also have to consider what else Daisy saw on the scroll.’ Miriam tapped her mouth thoughtfully. ‘Bonfire. Twig. Beginning.’
Otis buzzed in sudden alarm.
‘Don’t worry,’ I told him. ‘We’re not going to burn the tree to the ground on the off-chance it will reveal the treasure.’ And if anyone suggested otherwise, I’d slap them. Hard.
‘Definitely not,’ Miriam said, shocked at the suggestion.
Slim reached up and stroked one of the yew tree leaves reverently. ‘Never. The research team at home have discovered that one hundred and fifty years ago there were thirty-nine yew trees here. Now there are only two, this one and that smaller tree to the east. We can’t risk doing anything to damage them. There’s as much power, if not more, in those trees than there is inside any of us. They deserve our respect.’
Otis relaxed. To be honest, so did I.
‘What do you think, Daisy?’ Hugo said. ‘Shall we start with a magic questing circle to see if anything lies beneath the roots?’
A whattitty-what? I frowned, before dredging through my memories of all those hours I’d spent teaching myself about elf magic and poring through unfamiliar textbooks. ‘We link hands and use our combined senses and power to search for hidden objects that displace and disrupt the elements?’
‘Yep,’ he said cheerfully. ‘It will take a few hours of concentration to avoid damaging the tree, but the end result will be worth it. It’ll be a good opportunity to practise the feather-light control we were working on last night.’
I half-nodded, vaguely understanding. Everyone else immediately moved around the tree. I stayed where I was.
‘Daisy?’ Hugo queried.
‘Or,’ I said, ‘we could go the quick route and use earth magic on its own.’
Hugo looked at me patiently. ‘We can’t uproot the tree or disturb the ground it lives in and risk hurting it.’
I was confused. ‘I don’t mean that, I mean we cast out a net of simple earth magic designed to search. It’ll be a lot faster.’ Suddenly everyone was staring at me.
‘What do you mean?’ Rizwan asked.
‘You know.’ I gestured helplessly, puzzled as to why they didn’t think this was the easiest way. ‘Use earth magic to sense what’s unnatural and what doesn’t belong. It’ll tell us if there’s anything buried beneath the tree that shouldn’t be there.’
When all I received in response were five blank faces, I persisted. ‘I know this is a graveyard and there are bodies buried here, but they’ve been here long enough to become part of the earth itself. They shouldn’t affect what we’re doing, especially if we focus on this section.’
Slim squinted at Hugo. ‘Would that work?’
‘Of course it would work,’ Otis said, flapping towards him.
‘Yeah, what’s wrong with you?’ Hester waved her arms. ‘That’s how Daisy found the necklace Otis and I had been conjured into. It doesn’t work somewhere like a beach or a city park where you can expect to find lots of litter and items that don’t belong, but it should work here. This is a rural place and most of what’s here belongs to the land. And you,’ she sniped, ‘are all idiots!’
I frowned at her.
‘Sorry,’ she muttered. ‘I’m not as mentally prepared for the graveyard as I thought I was.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘But I’m not wrong. Theyareidiots.’
Hugo stared at me. ‘I’ve never heard of that technique before, and I’ve certainly never tried it. Did you read about it somewhere?’
‘No,’ I mumbled. ‘It’s just the obvious thing to do.’
It was Miriam who smiled first. ‘The benefits of not having a formal magic education. You’re not constrained by the knowledge of how things were done in the past, so you find your own methods.’
I honestly couldn’t understand why the idea of using earth magic that way was so unfamiliar to them. It wasn’t rocket science, it was a simple technique.
‘It always bothered me that you found the brownies’ necklace so quickly,’ Hugo said. ‘I thought you’d gotten lucky.’
