CHAPTER 6

Six weeks later, Fran was back at the candle-gazing.
The surroundings couldn't have been more different from before. This time she was in a small flat in the middle of a bustling city, which principally spoke English, her new PC playing the only music that broke the silence. There was no baby crying, nobody to make demands or ask her to save the world. It was bliss. Fran was incapable of being lonely by herself. She only ever got lonely around other people.
But she hadn't forgotten her responsibilities. Carefully, she fed a little of her mind into the flame, and was rewarded by the brush of a familiar thought-pattern. It had several names wrapped around it- Circe, Susan, Janet, Zainab, Hannah- but Fran paid no attention.
"Hi, Han. How's it going?"
"Amanda's fine. Going to say her first word now any day, if I'm to judge."
"You don't feel too thrilled about it."
"Oh."
"Hannah?"
There was a pause. "It won't be the same without you. I miss you, Fran. We all do. He's moping visibly, you know."
"I'm fresh out of sympathy, I'm afraid."
"But you miss him."
Fran closed her eyes. "I miss so much him it hurts, like there's a band of metal tightening around my ribs. I… told him once that I'd die without him. And sometimes it feels like I'm right, like I'm dying very slowly, all the life crushed out of me. "
"Oh, Fran. Don't cry, there, there." Hannah thought generalised kindness at her friend, but Fran could still feel a tinge of worry in the mix.
"What is it? I'm pretty sure I'll live."
Hannah sighed deeply. "Well, it's just that… I'm not Fynn will."
"What? No wait, I'm only using a tealight, I'll just get out the church candle and then we'll talk."

Fran sat back on her heels, concerned. According to Hannah, Fynn had started moping just after Fran left, and so she hadn't thought anything of it, until one day she found asleep in the corner of the field he was working in, the rain not disturbing him in the slightest. Since then, he'd fallen asleep unexpectedly, several more times, and that, combined with a lack of enchanted ability, worried Hannah. He was getting paler too, she'd said, more gaunt. He'd taken the two-pound hammer to the fences today, because he didn't have the strength to work with the five-pound one.
Fran could see why Hannah was worried. Enchanters didn't get the coughs and colds that mortals were prey to, so when one showed even the mildest symptoms, it was usually an indication of something far deeper.
One thing Hannah had found intriguing was Fynn's dreams. After a certain amount of prodding, he admitted to dreaming of Poppy. That she still slipped into any room he was in, to steal a kiss.
Now, Fran sniffed. Some people just wouldn't learn their lesson.
"Wait a minute," she said aloud, "stealing kisses? Poppy never had to do that. She was always the kissee."
Suddenly cold, Fran thought back. Why had the paper disappeared? All she'd done was to tell Poppy to unfold, not vanish entirely. But Poppy had been in her mind, maybe had picked up a few tricks…
"Calm down," Fran told herself rather shakily. "Poppy can't know any more than you do, she was made to learn from me alone. And I learnt… from my books!"
Most of Fran's books were harmless, and so could be left upon her bookcases. However, those that dealt with enchantment, or even the more orderly climbs of human magick, were kept in a chest under her bed.
Fran hated the chest. It had been another of Riarté's presents to her. It had a lock, but no key, and the lock on the scuffed leather was the shape of an agonised skull. It was twisted with bronzed agony, the usual skeletal grin tarnished and warped.
"Open," she commanded it, laying her hands on the lid. The lid gave way by the merest crack, and the skull stretched over the gap, a thin scream slowly filtering into Fran's hearing. It made her cringe, but she was an enchanter, and any enchanter who hadn't the stomach for a scream had no business opening the chest anyway.
"Open!" This time the lid tried to obey, against the resisting lock, now pulled almost out of recognition. The quality of the scream changed.
"Assssskmeeeee…"
Fran let go of the chest in shock. "Was that… ask me? You can speak?"
Back in its original place, the skull lock glowered at her. "I've a mouth, haven't I? Look, what is it you want to know?"
"You poor thing. I hurt you."
"Yes, yes, that's what I'm here for. What's in the books you want to know?"
Fran sat down more comfortably. "Well, I created this creature, only it learnt from me, and now it's hiding itself and draining away Fynn's life."
"The monster he took to his bed? Hmm."
Fran's hands were on her hips before she realised, and crossly she folded her them back into her lap. "You saw?"
"I got eyes too."
"No you haven't," she peeved. "You've just got little hollows."
"…And you'll stick a letter opener in 'em if I don't tell you what you want to know." At her shock, the chest grinned in a classical fashion. "Ah, but you're not your Dad. I don't reckon he could feel pain, in them final years. He couldn't think that anyone else could, I know that. But so do you, hey?"
Fran's face darkened. "That letter opener's starting to sound like a good idea."
"All right, all right." The lock still seemed amused. "Actually, eyes is the key. If yours can't see your Poppy, you've got to get the eyes that can."
"Where from?"
The lock settled more deeply into the lid. "Twenty miles to the East, the Hartnes roams. Years gone by, they were legion, but since the advent of the Order, I shouldn't think there's any left."
"Never heard of them."
"Not many people have, the reason being, they're invisible."
Fran snorted. "Did you ever hear the phrase, 'pull the other one'?"
"You know what I mean. You can't… what's the word? Perceive them, that's the one. I mean, they're physically visible, but people's minds just slide right round 'em."
"And I have to steal their eyes?"
"What? Oh, no. That Order I mentioned? All these men, like warrior monks, drove the Hartnes to extinction, more or less. But they couldn't see to fight them, so they decided they'd better get good at fighting things they couldn't see. So… they took out their own eyes. Invisible or not don't matter a damn if your opponent's blind anyway."
"Well, this is a nice little story. Remind me to keep you the hell away from Amanda."
"Not my fault life's not pretty. They keep their eyes in little boxes, these little glass cases. Hold the eyes in the case, and you can see your monster, no problem."
Fran pinched her nose. "Great, fine, wonderful." She rummaged around until she found an Ordnance Survey map. "Now show me where."

And that, decided Fran feelingly, is the last time I take advice from furniture.
She'd appeared in what looked like an office block. She wasn't sure what it was she'd been expecting, but the slightly ratty headquarters of a two man insurance company (according to the stationary she'd rifled through on arrival) wasn't the immediate option. She poked at a door, and found that everything was locked for the night. Sniffing disapprovingly at herself, Fran walked through a handy bit of wall, carefully avoiding the wiring.
The rest of the building was better maintained and according to the sign over the reception desk on the third floor, there were four companies renting space, each with its own floor.
Fran settled herself behind the desk, before waving cheekily at the CCTV camera pointed right at her- not at the spot where a customer would be, she realised, which meant that somebody somewhere didn't trust their staff.
There was further paperwork behind the desk, including the various fire zones in the building. As far as Fran could make out, the insurance company and the people above it were to evacuate to the car park, and the top two floors were supposed to pour barbeque seasoning over themselves and be done with it. There was also a basement zone, but that was the responsibility of the live-in caretaker.
Fran twitched guiltily. She was trespassing on somebody's home. On the other hand, it was almost certainly someone who'd know about the Hartnes, and the eyes of the Order-
"You come on out now, fanged one."
Fran found herself facing an impossibly old man dressed in shabby overalls. But there was nothing shabby about the axe he carried. In the dark, she could just about see the ragged shadows where his eyes once were.
"Er, hello," said Fran uncertainly. Now she was here, she wasn't entirely sure what to say. "Can I have your eyes, please?" lacked, in her opinion, a certain subtlety.
The man lowered the axe. "Oh. A burglar. What's your name, child?"
"Francesca. My parents were Mikhail and Cora." Fran wasn't sure why she added that. Besides, as far as her heart was concerned, her parents' names were John and Lauren Holmes.
"Don't flutter your feathers at me, little Circe," the man smiled. "I should have known an enchantress when she walked through a wall. You'd be amazed what most people don't bother setting up alarms against. I'm Miles."
"Fran." They shook hands.
"Well," puffed Miles, "now you're here, you can tell me your business over a cup of tea."

© Naomi Claydon, 2000