Nush was almost at the door when the roots lacing the walls came alive and webbed across her escape route. She pulled up short, the roots tensing into tight knots inches from her face. Beyond, lamplight flickered down the winding passage. With fists bunched, she spun to face her captors. The black eyes of the little man, Rundleskink, regarded her with sly curiosity, but Herne laughed balefully.

  ‘Not this time, my little bird,’ he said, striding towards her.

  Nush cut right for the next portal, another rough oval hewn from the dirt. Her bare feet hardly made a sound over the fur rugs. She wasn’t even halfway there when the roots grew from the walls, covering her escape route. There were other ways out of the room, but they all seemed too far around the circumference of the chamber. Rundleskink’s machine lay on the opposite side, where the little man stood on his stool. Herne rounded the large table in the middle of the room between them to close the distance.

  From her prone position she hadn’t seen the large throne constructed from intertwined antlers and draped with furs. It sat in front of weapons mounted on the walls. There was a huge bow, with a quiver of arrows, and a spear at least eight feet long and tipped with an expertly napped flint spur. There were axes of different sizes, also with flint heads, and an enormous shield of wood and animal skin, painted with rune-like symbols in red ochre and blue woad. But there was no time to consider any of this.

  She changed direction, only for her foot to clip the back of a bear’s head, which grimaced from the top of its flattened hide. Her knees and palms took the brunt of the fall, grazing on rough ground between fur rugs. She was up again in an instant, springing forward like a sprinter from the blocks, running headfirst into Herne’s immovable midriff. Her head snapped back, and she tried to spin away, but the giant stag-man’s hand caught one of her wrists. Her brown eyes met Herne’s, which were equally brown, deep, and flecked like polished walnut, given a modicum of levity by the crinkles created by his grin. He raised his other hand, a fist, which unfurled to a flat palm. Nush struggled to yank her arm free but was also unable to look away from Herne’s open hand. There appeared to be nothing there and a terrible thought conjured before her mind that he was going to slap her with his massive hand and that it would break her neck. As that idea approached its conclusion, replete with the sound of snapping vertebrae and Nush’s body going limp, Herne blew on his palm.

  A warm cloud of gold and blue dust, as fine as pollen, flew in Nush’s face. It smelled of freshly dug earth and spring blossoms and tickled her eyes and kissed her skin, entering her mouth and nostrils. The sensation of a terrific sneeze seized her and grew and grew and grew, until it seemed it would never stop, and she would dissolve into some pre-orgasmic state. But then the sneeze came, loud and unladylike, obliterating and climatic, ejecting a spray of spit and snot, probably bedazzled with the colourful powder. It echoed around the chamber, and the aftereffects that followed were infused with drunken satisfaction that permeated to the marrow.

  Nush grinned and snorted. ‘Hello, big boy.’ She looked Herne up and down and at how he was holding her wrist. ‘Ever heard of MeToo, fucknut?’

  Before he could reply, the earth shook with a deep rumble. More dirt showered from the domed ceiling. Concerned, Herne scrutinised the dangling roots above them, while keeping hold of Nush’s arm.

  ‘Oowhoow!’ Nush said, her knees slackening so that Herne had to hoist her back to her feet before she fell. ‘You rocked my world, big boy.’

  Behind her free hand, she half-stifled the laughter at her own bad joke. The afterglow of the sneeze made this all very silly. An earthquake to top off meeting a giant stag-man with a big ding-a-ling in the woods. And the little black man – could she say that now, if he wasn’t really a man? Could she say that because she was a brown woman? Did it bollocking-well matter, considering the circumstances? Before coming to a conclusion, Nush mentally staggered away and found herself wondering if the little man had a little willy and how inappropriate that was, but she really wanted to know and thought about asking him later. Then there was the whole rest of the apparently magical world issue, with the creepy woods festooned with forgotten things, oh, and vines that tossing-well came alive and stopped her from escaping. Not forgetting this underground lair of stag-man with his enormous cock-a-doodle-doo, and the bizarre machine the little man, Rundleskink, fretted over. And then she remembered the actual bazaar she once went to on a day trip when holidaying in Cyprus, and she hopped over to Cairo for the day. That machine was more bizarre than the bazaar she’d visited. Which was funny, almost as funny as the word bazaar itself. So funny, in fact, she had to say that world out loud.

  ‘Bazaar!’ Nush snorted.

  ‘Ba-zaar!’ Snigger.

  ‘Bzzzaarrr.’ A feral giggle.

  ‘How much bluebell dust did you give her?’ Rundleskink asked.

  ‘She’s strong-willed,’ Herne said. ‘We need her obedient.’

  Nush squared on Herne as best she could, trying to lift her heavy eyelids to focus on him most seriously, but it was all too hilarious. ‘Bit rapey,’ she said and went up on tiptoes to bop his nose with her index finger. ‘Boop!’

  Herne blinked with affronted surprise.

  ‘Didn’t your mummy teach you it’s naughty to drug young ladies? Or did the other incels make fun of your horns?’ She pushed out her bottom lip in mock sadness.

  Horns was a very funny word; it was like saying he had a whole bunch of dicks growing out of his head. This cracked her up into a fit of snickering as she pondered what the collective noun for a bunch of dicks was. A crotch of dicks? A pant load? A wank load? A tosspot? A handful? Or possibly, she’d already hit on it: an incel of dicks? Ah well, it was a linguistic conundrum she wasn’t going to resolve today.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  Herne impatiently scooped her up, to which she whopped, and carried her across the room. Her head lolled a little and snapped straight. ‘If you try anything, I’ll bite your cock off, just so you know.’

  ‘I like this one,’ Rundleskink said. ‘She’s got fire in her bones.’

  Nush’s head lolled his way. She considered asking if he did indeed have a little willy but decided not to, as it sounded as though he’d given her a compliment. ‘I do have fire, thanks.’ She gave Rundleskink a dopey grin, noticing the little man was surrounded by a rainbow of faint colours and twirling whips of bronze, gold, and silver. ‘I like your pretty colours. They’re much nicer than our big incel, here.’

  Herne dumped her on the throne.

  ‘Hey,’ she protested and made to get up, but Herne waved a finger and roots snaked over Nush’s wrists to tie her to the arms of the throne. ‘Just because you’re only green and gold.’ She looked down and noticed for the first time she had colours too. They were a translucent impressionist oil painting of reds, oranges, and yellows. The ghosts of a Monet sunset over the Thames. She did have fire. Panicked, she struggled, kicking her legs before realising she wasn’t burning, but that these colours were harmless and fascinating.

  The strongest quake yet gripped the chamber. Herne staggered back to the machine, which Rundleskink was clambering over in a fit. He squawked in frustration as his hand moved shiftily over the keyboard, after which he ran across the thick brass pipe that belted the contraption to tweak the position of levers and knobs, darting from one to the next. When the quake shifted up a gear, a chunk of the roof broke free.

  From her throne, Nush hooted with manic intoxication.

  Rundleskink screamed, ‘No!’ already crawling over the face of the machine.

  Herne reacted, throwing out a hand. A root shot down to catch the falling masonry, but not fast enough. It struck the machine’s top corner. One of the glass orbs cracked, releasing a clutch of butterflies along with a fainting mist of azure. In a flutter of delicate yet clumsy wing beats, the butterflies rose towards the roof. But as they did, with each propulsive hop up through the air, their beautiful wings faded. Their bodies leeched of colour and substance, becoming translucent and finally disintegrating in a fine sprinkle of grey dust.

  It was the saddest thing Nush had ever seen, or at least it felt as though it was, in an end-of-the-night, friend-holding-your-hair-back, one-bottle-of-prosecco-too-many kind of way. A fat tear rolled down her cheek, and suddenly she didn’t feel quite as shitfaced. Drunk yes, but not utterly blitzed. Herne and Runkleskink, arguing over the machine, were still casting off an aura of colours, and so was she. In fact, most of the things in the tremulous room as well as the room itself had auras. The depressing fur rugs were a patchwork of very muted colours, hardly there at all. The roots, shaking down dust as the quake rumbled on unrelenting, were green and gold like Herne, as well as having hints of blues and purples.

  As her sadness ebbed, Rundleskink leapt for the nautical wheel in the centre of the machine. It had begun to spin wildly clockwise. He arrested its turn, but his feet were slipping on the brass pipe ledge.

  ‘Assistance, Lord of the Hunt!’ the little man shouted.

  Herne joined the effort and together they hauled the wheel back, popping veins on Herne’s biceps with each slow revolution, until the earthquake died and equilibrium was restored.

  While Herne strained to hold the wheel fast, Rundleskink jumped down and ran over to the spindle. He produced a pair of scissors from the pocket on the front of his leather apron and snipped at the thread. A length of fine silver in his fist, he ran back to the machine and tethered the wheel in place by anchoring it to the brass tubing with nimble knots from his long, bony fingers.

  ‘The moonthread will hold it,’ he said, with an odd combination of defiance and doubt.

  Herne let go, hovering his hands for a couple of wingbeats in case the moon-thread didn’t hold. But it did and he relaxed. With the wheel righted, the earth had calmed, which Nush thought was curious.

  ‘What’s that?’ she slurred, gesturing with her head, as her hands were unavailable.

  ‘Tell the wench nothing,’ Herne said, hands on hips.

  ‘This one has irked you, hasn’t she? There was a time you could charm the rusted knickers from an iron-maiden,’ Rundleskink said, standing back on his stool and scanning his machine, ready to act if anything went out of balance.

  ‘And there was a time you forged the fates of the world with little more than a campfire and starlight.’

  ‘It required a touch more than that, but point taken, oh Lord of the Greenwood.’ Rundleskink turned his attention to Nush regardless. ‘What do you think it is, my pretty?’

  ‘I said, tell her—’ Herne began, but Nush was happy to annoy him.

  ‘Either a sculpture or a machine. Maybe both.’ Her face was a little numb but also warm and cosy, and she worked her mouth to encourage feeling. Despite everything, she was relaxed. In fact, merry would be the word. She’d bet a month’s commission that Rundleskink would be fun on a night out. Herne? Not so much. He would probably spend half his time looking in the mirror, admiring what he saw and massaging oil into his beard, like that YouTube hipster body builder who claimed he only ate liver.

  ‘Aha!’ Rundleskink said, hopping down and walking over to her, with the immediate danger having passed. ‘See, she is not just a pretty face. Smart, fiery, and beautiful. I can see why Lorimer is taken with her.’

  ‘What? He is?’

  ‘Wyrdsmith!’ Herne warned.

  The little man waved him off without even turning. ‘Indeed, yes,’ he said, climbing effortlessly up the throne to sit on one of the arms near Nush’s restrained hand. The haze of colours drifted off him like vapours. ‘That is why you are here.’ He gestured with a flourish to the chamber around them.

  Nush felt drunk, but it didn’t have the same dulling effect on her mind. Instead, if felt more open, clearer. ‘You're telling me I’m your hostage because sexy buns Lord Michael Lorimer fancies me?’

  ‘Not exactly. Your fate would be to fall in love with Michael and he with you.’

  ‘How could you know that?’

  ‘As with all things it is written in the stars.’

  ‘I don’t believe in horoscopes.’

  ‘And I wager before today you’d never met a deity of the earth or a wyrdsmith.’

  ‘What are they when they are at home?’

  ‘A god of the greenwood, part of the other realm that exists a shadow’s width behind yours – well not behind exactly, but that’s as good a way to understand it as any – and I’m what you would call an elf.’

  ‘If you say so, but I still don’t believe in horoscopes.’

  ‘Nor should you, not if they are divined by a human. I am one of the last forgers of the fates.’

  ‘One of the last? That’s sad,’ Nush slurred.

  ‘Yes, we are a fading breed, as are the places in which we exist. It was not always the case. Once, our worlds were closely entwined. Our folk knew of each other. But the more your kind spread and the less you relied on us and more on your technology, the weaker the magic became. Our world shrank, thinned, and disappeared like a moth-eaten cloth. Some say the pieces that have gone simply vanished altogether. Some say they moved on beyond the second sight. All I know is that the holes continue to grow. This little patch,’ again he waved his hand around them, ‘is one of the last because we work so very hard keeping it alive. But with each turn of the world, it becomes harder, perhaps impossible.’

  ‘Not impossible,’ Herne said, striding over to tower above them.

  The black elf gave a heavy sigh, and Nush wanted to give him a big old hug but couldn’t with her hands restrained. Her fingers flexed and seeing it, Rundleskink patted her hand. Their vaporous auras briefly mixed. The sensation was odd, more reminiscent of touching the polished staircase of some ancient building, patinaed with a palpable feeling of history.

  ‘You’re sad,’ she said, knowing this to be true. Feeling it.

  He met her eyes. His large grey lips quirked weakly, and he patted her hand again and stood up on the throne’s arm. ‘Not at all. Merely tired.’

  ‘Tired? The Wyrdsmith? Pah!’ Herne blustered, fist jutting into his hips. ‘Come, Rundleskink, what next? What have you failed to do?’

  The little elf bridled and spun on a sixpence, toe bells jingling. But, before he could reply, he pinwheeled his arms. The earth shook ferociously. A mighty crack rent the air and sand began to gout through a fissure that had appeared in the ceiling.