Swift by R. J. Anderson Page A

complaint.
    By the time Mica returned, Ivy had snuffed out the day-lamps and was pretending to be asleep. She waited until his breathing deepened into the usual full-throated rumble, then dropped lightly to the rug and tiptoed out.
    All seemed quiet as she made her way through the tunnels, but halfway up the Hunter’s Stair she froze, her skin prickling. Had that been a footstep? She turned, ready to confront her pursuer and brazen it out. But she saw nothing in the darkness behind her, not even the tiniest flicker.
    Ivy set her jaw and climbed faster, silently rebuking herself for letting her nerves get the better of her. Yes, it would be disastrous if she were caught sneaking out of the Delve, but she’d already taken that risk three times by daylight and survived.
    When she emerged onto the hillside, she had to turn nearly a full circle before she spotted the moon. Only half-full, and dimmed a little by the ragged clouds, but it would have to do. Now, where to begin? She couldn’t return to the launching place she’d used earlier, with its too-gentle slope that reeked of fear and failure. If this were her last chance to change shape, she had to be bolder than that. Ivy set off at an angle across the hill, crunching through the heather and bracken.
    After a few breathless minutes she reached a spot where the rocks broke through the soil and the ground dropped steeply away. It would have been a long jump to the bottom even for a human, and at piskey size it was high enough to make her nervous. But it was the perfect place to launch herself from, if she became a swift.
    Ivy tilted her head back, closing her eyes as the moonlight tingled on her skin. Summoning the familiar image in her mind, she spread her arms wide, stepped forward…
    And a scream rang out from behind her.
    Startled, Ivy twisted around – and her foot slipped. Arms flailing, legs tangled together, she let out a cry of her own as she toppled over the edge. But the shout became a shriek, keening high in her ears, and her skin changed into feathers even as she fell. She skimmed a hand’s span over the rocks and zoomed upward, into the open sky.
    She was flying! Joy filled Ivy from her crown to her forked tail-feathers. Even though she’d never flown before, she felt no fear or awkwardness; her new body was the perfect shape to bend the air currents to her bidding, and she could change speed or direction with the merest flick of a feather. How could she ever have thought of wind as an insubstantial thing? The updraught beneath her wings felt as solid as the earth itself.
    Daring, she rose higher, the landscape dropping away beneath her. Her swift’s eyes were as sharp as her piskey ones had ever been, and she could pick out every feature of the countryside below – hills and valleys, cottages and barns, and here and there the silhouettes of old whim-engine and pumping-engine houses, remnants of the hundreds of mines that now lay abandoned and overgrown. Lights dotted the ground and sprinkled the horizon like bits of shattered crystal – not merely the small clusters of human dwellings she’d grown accustomed to seeing from the hillside, but entire towns and cities glittering in the dark. And in the distance lay more cottages, more towns, more stretches of open country both wild and tame…and beyond them, the grey rolling line of the ocean.
    Excitement surged in Ivy’s breast. She could go anywhere she wanted now. In fact, if she’d known where Truro was, she could have flown to her mother this very minute…
    Then she remembered the cry that had startled her off the ledge, and the warmth inside her turned chill. It might have been an animal or the shriek of a passing bird, but what if it wasn’t? Ivy doubled back towards the familiar hillside, searching for signs of life. But she saw no frenzied movements or splashes of unexpected colour; all that met her gaze were the dull hues of wild greens and shrubberies, earth and clay and stone. And though