Scarborough Fair

Me: Hello, sorry about the wait, lots going on for uni, I've just been on a placement which required me to start at 5am and I didn't finish until 6pm, for 3 weeks, no weekends off, so I'm knackered, but I'm finally a little more inspired. Oh, and I've run out of Scarborough Fair verses to stick at the beginning of every other chapter...

I just heard they're bringing out a book about Dragon and Anastasia in July, called "Dragon's Oath". Been reading some people's thoughts on it, they're generally negative. I dunno, I'd be quite interested to read it, see what the real authors come up with for them. I'm trying not to write too much of this, as I want it to be as close to the books as possible, so I may change some elements of this story, like flashbacks, to fit in, but I will tell you where I've changed stuff and I won't change much.

I was listening to Thomas Newman's "Any Other Name" when I wrote this. Beautiful piece of music. Put it on as you read this – really puts the story across well.

Anyway, here's the next chapter, enjoy!

Are you going to Scarborough Fair?

Parsley sage, rosemary and thyme.

Remember me to one who lives there,

He once was a true love of mine.

Oliver

I couldn't remember a time in my life when I'd been more terrified, or even anywhere close. I had woken in a cold sweat from one nightmare into another. It was like being dunked into cold water and being held down. I'm sure I was yelling but I couldn't hear the sound coming out of my own mouth, I was desperately trying to scream her name, to get to her, suddenly very much awake and all too conscious of the fact that someone was trying to restrain me.

A nurse was holding my upper arms with a firm grip. "Mr. Pendragon, you need to come outside." She said, blocking my view of my sister with her body. I violently shook myself from her grasp and tried to push her out of my way, I was a male vampyre, I could easily have thrown her into the opposite wall. I didn't care if I hurt her, I had to be with Ellie.

The nurse stepped straight into my path again, I hadn't pushed her far enough. "The medical team needs room to work."

I barely heard her words as I watched them roll up a defibrillator on a trolley and attach electrodes to her – my little sister...

"Mr. Pendragon."

The touch on my arm was soft, but serious, and suddenly I could hear the nurse again. I understood, they needed space and didn't need the hassle of me panicking. I nodded and turned on my heel, closing the door quietly behind me and watched through the thick glass. The nurse gave my shoulder a sympathetic squeeze and suggested that I go and get a cup of coffee.

"I don't want a fucking coffee!" I snapped, "I just want to stay as close to her as I can, is that too much to ask?"

She said nothing, and silently went back into the room. I had no idea how I could even look at this. I forced myself to breathe, it was okay, defibrillators saved millions of people... So why was I fearing the worst? I couldn't help it. How did she get so ill, just from a bump on the head? My own flesh and blood! I wanted to scream! How could I have let this happen to her? That little girl was everything to me! I heard the first shock, a tear ran down my cheek and in that moment I closed my eyes and begged Nyx to take me instead of her.

I couldn't feel Nyx now. At all. Not even one little bit. Not through the scream of the ECG and the blurring bodies with stethoscopes and latex gloves. What had my little sister done to deserve this? Had I done something to deserve this? Was this some awkward way of punishing me for something? I could hear my father's voice in my head, I could remember him holding her in his arms and smiling more brightly than he would have done in the entire day. I could remember my mother sitting by the Aga rocking her, and I remembered why they had had so many children.

They wanted a daughter. And after six boys, finally they had Fran and Ellie. I dropped off the edge of a pit to oblivion in my mind – my father would never have let this happen. It was meningitis, for fuck's sakes! And it hadn't started out as a serious case of! My father would have known like that that something wasn't right before, he would never have let it get to this stage. He would have known how to save her, how to protect her from it in the first place. He could have done everything that I hadn't. It wasn't that I couldn't, it was that I hadn't, I was sure. I had made a diabolical choice in my life and my family was suffering as a result.

I stared through the glass and my tears. Nothing, still nothing, the shocks were lifting her off the bed and the violent pumping of the doctor trying to restart her heart looked like it might break her ribs. I could hear the ring of the ECG screaming – they were trying, trying so hard for her, I was trying so hard for her and it wasn't enough.

I don't know how long I stood there, it felt like seconds. I was completely numb to everything except what was happening inside that room. I watched them send volts through her tiny body, pump oxygen into her lungs, press on her heart, stick needles into her skin, shout and completely obscure her from my view.

The doctor holding the defibrillator let his fists, still clamped around the machine, drop to his waist, his face a picture of pure misery. A childish part of me asked why was he stopping?

And it was at that moment that my entire world slowed down.

I could hear him speak, even over the screaming ECG, the loud voices inside, and the bustle of the corridor outside, I heard him.

"Are we all agreed we've done everything we can?"

My jaw dropped slowly. "No..." I whimpered, my voice shaking. Panic gripped me and I threw the door to the room open. "No!" I shouted, "You can't stop! Please! Don't stop you need to help her please..."

"Mr. Pendragon..." the doctor said, tears appearing at the edges of his own eyes, "Ellie's heart stopped beating almost nine minutes ago."

I knew it. She was dead. My precious baby sister was dead. I looked at her lifeless body lying there covered in electrodes and burst into tears.

The doctor wiped his eyes on the back of his arm. "Time of death: eight forty-one pm."

A nurse switched off the flat-lining ECG, and the room fell silent. I couldn't control myself anymore, I couldn't stop shaking, I couldn't stop crying, I couldn't stop regretting all the days when I hadn't got around to telling her a bedtime story. My hands covered my mouth as more tears streamed and I fell to my knees.

Suddenly the doctor was in front of me. "I'm so sorry..." he said, removing one of his medical gloves so he could wipe a tear from his own cheek, "Her adrenal glands began to haemorrhage, it caused her to go into acute renal failure."

I barely heard him. All I heard was the shattered bits of my soul clatter to the floor around me, as hers floated out of the window.

Yianna

I watched silently as Hera pounced on a mouse from the windowsill.

I didn't even see the mouse until she had already caught it, hiding in the darkness of the shade cast by the leg of my bureau. All I saw was her ears prick and her eyes hone in on that something on the floor, and pounce. I was impressed – my eyesight was never that good. My cat was my eyes and ears around this place, and I'm sure that if she could speak, she would tell me all the things that I didn't know about it. Still I watched silently as she clenched the flailing mouse in her jaws and crushed its neck, as it went limp, as she dragged it back over to her basket in the corner and proceeded to eat it.

Hera was a Chartreux, a domestic French breed of cat, large, lithe, with an inky blue-black coat and copper coloured eyes. Chartreux are all named according to the year in which they were born. Their names always began with the letter of the alphabet of that year, which ran through the alphabet, emitting letters K, Q, W, X, Y and Z. They weren't generally known for their hunting prowess, however, Hera was definitely the mouse-catcher my office needed. I allowed her to hunt, one; it was necessary and two; it is after all her natural behaviour.

The answer as to why we had mice all the way down here alluded me. It was only my office that seemed to be the problem and I'd had so many other things to do that I'd pushed it to the back-boiler for now, and Hera was doing a grand job.

And all the while, as I sat there silently, I never felt a single pang of pity for the mouse. It had never asked to be born a mouse. It was stuck in all its behaviours and mannerisms that made it a pest, it couldn't help what it was. And still, I didn't mind Hera killing it. I remembered way back, back to before I was even Marked, sitting in an RE lesson listening to how animals didn't have souls, only humans did. Did that count vampyres, I wondered? I did believe that animals had souls, of course I did, but never in my life had I been able to draw a psionosphere for an animal. People like Demeter and Ellen always surprised me in their instant ability to read an animal's fears. I had come to a conclusion in my head – I had been given the gift to smell fear, but had at the same time lost the ability to see it.

For all my affinity, I couldn't feel the fears of a dying mouse.

My phone rang, and I tore my eyes away from that spot where Hera had pounced to swivel in my chair and answer it.

"Hello." I said, tucking my left arm around my body and balancing my right elbow on it to minimalise the effort of holding the receiver to my ear. It had to be said, it certainly wasn't a voice I was expecting to hear.

"Yianna." Came an extremely matter-of-fact tone from the receiver into my ear, "It's Spiridion."

My brow creased. "Spiridion?" I answered, my voice ran deadly cold, "What do you want?"

"As much as I enjoy our banterous conversations Yianna, I'm afraid I have some very bad news to depart." I raised my eyebrows slightly and remained silent as if to beckon his next words. His voice was gruff and grated against the inside of my skull as it crackled down the phone line. "I'm afraid Oliver's sister died this morning."

My grip on the phone tightened. Jesus Christ. "And why am I hearing this from you?" I asked him.

"I've been looking after the children of late." He replied sternly, "And Oliver is in no fit state to tell you himself."

That poor little girl. How old was she, five? Her life barely begun and she was dead, before she could even deserve it. For the life of me I could never fathom why bad things happen to the good and innocent, to children, and yet there were criminals that thought their chosen vocation was funny and never got caught, never got ill. I remembered Ian Huntley, jailed for life for murdering two little girls, he was attacked in prison by a fellow inmate with a sharpened toothbrush, not only was he saved by doctors, the government then proceeded to give him £20,000 compensation. And what about those girls' right to a life? Life made me sick sometimes.

"Haemorrhage of the adrenal glands." He said, "The doctors call it Waterhouse-Friderichsen Syndrome secondary to the meningitis. Kid never stood a chance."

"Right." I said, after pausing to allow the information to soak in and cradling my forehead, "Tell Oliver not to worry about work or money. And if there's anything I can do then let me know."

"I'll tell him."

"Does he want it announced to the school or not?"

"Not yet. Although I imagine it will get out anyway at some point and the school will have to be told officially."

"I'll leave it for now then." I said gravely, "Oh, and let me know if there's a funeral, I'd like to attend."

He seemed accepting. "Good night Yianna." He said.

"Good night." I said, as the line went dead.

Anastasie

At last, I think I've found some peace and quiet. The library.

If you think we're all studious little beavers then you're sorely mistaken, and at gone ten in the morning, it was definitely the last place you'd find even the most ill-prepared pre-exam crammer. It was a tiny library, there weren't exactly many books published on vampyres, and even then just a select few were available here. It alluded me, how everyone here could learn so much more about themselves if they'd only look. It was silent here, nothing moved, and I sat at the desk, opposite the door, like I was expecting someone to open it and walk in.

My attempts at my Sociology essay were half-hearted, and I could do with being in bed had it not been for my mind needing the peace, and privacy, to think. When you ask yourself questions you don't usually expect yourself to answer them, and surprisingly, your rational side never tells you the answers you want to hear. I sighed, and turned the page of my textbook. I thought of Oliver again, him kissing me, and I wondered what we were thinking. Or if we were thinking the same thing. I shook my head to myself, I would do better to forget it ever happened. How could I when someone was accusing us though? In here, over the past few days, I've looked in every book I can get my hands on. Not one describes a kiss as being the cause of an Imprint. I've often wondered what Imprints felt like. What it was like to share a bond like that with someone. Not all Imprints were the same if course, but they all arise for a reason, a chemistry, be it sexual or otherwise. I'd never been kissed before. No one had ever held me like that before. It had felt like a part of life that I wasn't allowed to have, that I couldn't reach because of my own limitations. Nowadays, sex is expected, and if guys know that you're a complete beginner, they'll run a mile. I supposed that was what drunken escapades were for. But I can't do it. Not with any random tosser. I didn't expect a moonlight serenade, or an expensive dinner, or a bed of rose petals I just wanted him not to care a damn that I was gonna make it up as I go along. It would help if I could even look guys in the face.

So when that happened with Oliver, it was like he'd given me a feeling I never thought I'd have, no matter how stupid and silly it was. That feeling of being genuinely wanted. And now, I partially wished it had never happened, so I wouldn't have to resign myself to the fact it would never happen again. I wasn't sure whether I was grateful or if I hated him for it.

"Anastasie?"

It was a little voice. I looked up from my work and blinked very suddenly with disbelief. "Ellie?" I said, staring as Eleanor Pendragon stood before me, the little girl wearing the same pyjamas she had in the hospital, and her long blonde hair in a ponytail over her shoulder, "What are you doing here?"

"I found you." She said, her face alight with a big grin as she tipped onto her toes and gave a little jump, "I've been looking for ages!"

I chucked pens and pencils into my pencil case and shoved books into my bag away so I could take her back to Oliver. He was insane to be bringing her here, and what was he even doing here at this time anyway? I never bothered to think. "Did Oliver bring you here? What are you doing out of bed?"

"Oliver's sad." She said, beginning to look upset, "And I can't make it better."

I got up from my seat, the chair legs scraping the wooden floorboards, and gently slung my bag over my shoulder."What's the matter?"

"Nothing I do will help him."

I pointed towards the door. "Is he in his office?"

She shook her head, swinging her ponytail from her shoulder and back and forth. "He's at home now."

My voice went faint. "So, why are you here?"

A voice came from my left, and at the same time a trace of the smell of smoke wafted into my nose. "I told her where she could find you."

Sitting on the table just across from me was a little blonde girl, older than Ellie, about eleven, her hair braided in pigtails hand hanging down over her shoulders. I had never seen her before, but I knew instantly who she was.

"No..." I said, "No... You!" I pointed at the pigtailed girl, "You're playing tricks on me!" She remained completely silent, completely still, "No..." I turned, "Ellie?" I said, "How?"

She grinned again and rocked back and forth on her tiptoes, and said nothing.

I practically threw myself against Yianna's door. "Yianna!" I yelled, hammering against the door, "Yianna!"

The door opened and Yianna appeared, sickeningly tidy as always. "Anastasie please calm down."

"Yianna I need to get to Oliver's house!"

Her brow lowered. "He didn't tell me you were on first name terms."

I paused to mentally slap myself around the face. "It's, really really important I, I need to go, now!"

"And what has happened outside that so requires your immediate attention?"

I looked her dead in the eye whilst trying to calm myself down. "His sister's died."

She turned her head slightly to the side. "How did you know?"

"You knew?"

"I knew." She said. My immediate response was to ask her how, but I bit my tongue. "The question is how do you know?"

"I'll tell you later I just really need to see him."

Yianna looked down at me, from her five foot eleven to my five foot two. "Anastasie, it's broad daylight."

"I need to go."

"I'm sorry."

"Yianna!"

"Anastasie, I know you care about that little girl, but Professor Pendragon needs his space right now. Friends and family will be all he can deal with."

But he has no family and I am his friend! "Yianna please!"

"I'm sorry Anastasie, no is no."

I blinked.

"You can go and pay your respects when the grief isn't so fresh." She said, "I promise."

I'm fairly sure I must have looked like one mean bitch right then. I could even bring myself to say anything to her I was so angry. I turned on my heel and went, breaking into a run as I went. Yianna didn't understand, and I couldn't tell her.

Slamming my bedroom door, I knew there had to be another way. Our windows were bolted so that we could only open them a fraction, something to do with not falling out and plummeting to our deaths. And also something to do with not escaping during the daylight hours and dying. There was also a shutter system, which came down every morning and didn't come up again until sunset. Fortunately they hadn't come down yet, and I could still see across the silent Scarborough Bay.

"Otkryvat."

I could cast spells using Latin, but for some reason, Russian seemed to work better. I had no idea why, but I wasn't going to be one to look a gift horse in the mouth, so to speak. The bolts clicked off at my command and I pushed the window open as far as it would go. Climbing onto the windowsill, I swung my legs over the edge and looked down – the tide was in, and if I fell, I would hit shallow water and whatever lay beneath it. Christ... I didn't know if I could do this – I hadn't exactly tried again since jumping off the keep. It was a long way down... Come on Anastasie... Closing my eyes tightly, I took a deep breath.

"Dvizheniya."