Earlie (Sisters of Soil Book 1), page 1
EARLIE
HOLLY THORNE
Copyright © 2022 Holly Thorne
All rights reserved.
hollythornebooks.com
For you who was there when I began
writing this book, but not by the end of it.
Earlie watched the human girl fill up her glass and wondered what it’d be like to seize the girl’s arm and run her tongue from wrist to elbow. A tattoo of a rose was there, ink faded. She was still dressed in her earthly garb—ripped trousers, a belly bar turning the skin of her stomach green, eyes smudged with mascara. She had been crying, this human.
The girl moved away. Earlie picked up her glass and took a sip, eyes straying back to the vaulted hall beyond.
It was aeons now since her coming of age ceremony had been commemorated with a speech, since she’d danced over the quartzite floor with her father, smiling up into his steely eyes whilst her hair fanned around them like spun sugar, since the feast had been laid and eaten, then laid again when a troll fell into the ornately carved table, upending it over the hall floor.
That had easily been Earlie’s favourite part of the revel. She’d pouted heavily when the troll was escorted from the hall, steps lumbering and drunk, arms taking clumsy thumps at the guards who held him. Cerulean had smirked; it had been her to spike the punch. Most folk had noticed the crystal bowl turning from green to red but trolls were especially dull-witted.
Blinking drowsily, Earlie caught the flicker of some being’s eyes beyond the light of a candelabra. Dustings of dirt fell into her hair from above where the winged creatures glided from bough to bough. As she swiped away the grit, a low growl rumbled through the hall and Earlie caught the end of a smothered shriek.
She rested her chin in her palms; the rabble were growing restless too.
For three hours now, Earlie, her older sisters and two, stoic parents had been confined to the head table, watching the endless procession of entertainment before them. They clapped absently as a blue whisp of a girl bowed after finishing her dance. She was so tiny that Earlie found it difficult to follow the speck of her over the floor.
When a wizened fairy stepped up afterwards, carrying a fiddle, Earlie sighed, lowering her head until it landed on her sister’s shoulder.
‘I am so bored I might die,’ she whispered. ‘I am so bored that dying seems fun.’
‘Dance then, Earlie,’ Cerulean told her. She swept a hand over the hall where boggarts and nymphs and winged fae and horned fae all stood in the shadows, arcing around the area cleared for performers. ‘Clear the hall. Send everyone away. Demand your iron necklace now. This is your night, little one.’
Earlie tipped her head back and smiled, taking in a breath of the mulchy hall air as if she could smell all the metal and concrete and flesh of the world above her.
Risarial was the only one of the sisters who had actually ventured earthside; Cerulean having only sat on Earth’s curb, dangling over her legs.
Her oldest sister always returned stinking and with a headache that lasted for nights but Earlie was fascinated every time by the fire in her eyes—a fire she wanted to burn herself on, too.
Now that she was of age, Earlie was permitted to venture earthside herself. Once presented with her iron necklace, the hill above her head would crack like an egg, opening to a world of sunlight and danger and maybe—maybe—something more.
Earlie stood up before another performer could take the place of the fiddler. Holding a long-fingered hand up to the hall, she made her way down the table, ignoring the frown of disapproval from her mother.
Her mother who had barely left her chair all revel, only rousing to brush aside revellers caught in the snare of her beauty. Earlie passed a young pixie boy being held back by his wings, blood snaking down the veins as they teared. His obsidian eyes showed neither pain nor fear, just a manic compulsion to be close to his lady. Earlie waved a hand over his eyes to extricate him and only then did he scream.
She pushed aside the curtain of ivy and stepped out into the night. A light mizzle was falling and the youngest of the fae were gathered close against it, refusing to honour their families by engaging in the revel’s formalities. Under the apple trees, a group of male fae antagonised a human servant, one holding his tray above their head and tipping the glasses atop it so they spilled. Another held a changeling girl by the hand, leading her away from her fae parent and into the trees.
Gathered too were members of the seelie court’s gentry, here only because tradition demanded it. They grimaced as the hems of dresses and jackets caught on the thick brambles which arced over the garden. Earlie walked through them, her own dress gliding smoothly and snagging on nothing.
She slipped under a drape of willow, emerging onto a shadowy balcony. Leaning against the stone balustrade, Earlie peered out at the grey-blue waters. Somewhere out there, beyond all the mist and the rain and the invisible, impenetrable boundary was the human world.
‘You just missed a great fight break out between the courts. All that blood was beautiful.’
Earlie turned her head as Risarial emerged on her left, lifting two hands to rest on the balustrade beside her. A long tendril of hair breezed over her forehead, quickly dotting with rain. She shook her head to dislodge it, gaze fixed on the far white band of mist.
Risarial had inherited their mother’s inky hair and dark, ovoid eyes which always roved so slowly, so deliberately. Though they held none of the deathliness as their mothers’, they were just as enrapturing in their intensity.
Earlie spotted a smile beginning on those red lips. She frowned and looked away. ‘Rubbish.’
‘Rubbish, indeed,’ Cerulean said. She carried a stein of punch instead of the delicate, tall glass presented to her at the beginning of the revel. ‘You miss nothing but Mother’s ugly frown and a mob of cantankerous seelie courtiers.’
Earlie smiled. ‘Oh dear. I am ever so rude.’ Absently, she reached a hand up to her neck, trailing her fingers over where her necklace would sit.
Risarial turned so her back leant against the balustrade and eyed the path of Earlie’s fingers. She said, ‘You’ll be a lamb thrown to wolves.’
‘You go often,’ Earlie countered. She moved her fingers to her hair and flicked it behind her shoulders.
‘It’s like slowly filling your veins up with poison.’
‘Then it must be an addictive poison. Staying here will kill me faster. Boredom must be its own kind of venom.’
Risarial chuckled. Earlie caught the tang of her perfume—tuberose and amber—as she leant close and whispered into her ear, ‘Then I think you are ready.’
Beside them, Cerulean frowned. ‘What will you do?’ She took a mouthful of punch, running the back of her hand over her lips. The golden curls in her short hair bounced as she did.
Earlie gazed down at the gently moving waters. She caught sight of the mermaids swimming just below the surface, smiling up at her and offering their watery congratulations. She let her eyes trail along their rippling hair and to the skin which was bare above their opalescent tails.
‘I want to find love,’ she said, looking up at her sisters. Her eyes, for the first time, held the same intensity as Risarials’. ‘Real, true, mortal love.’
Cerulean raised an eyebrow. ‘Indeed?’ She looked over at Risarial who had fallen still, fingers taut around the bloodstone pendent she wore at her neck. ‘Is this something you’ve found on your travels?’
Risarial slowly shook her head. She tapped a finger down on the balustrade, lips pursed. ‘The quest is oddly burdensome.’
‘How so?’ Earlie asked.
Risarial smiled thinly. ‘You will soon find out for yourself. Humans…they’re complicated little creatures. Messy. Exasperating.’
Cerulean laughed aloud. ‘You mean to say they’re all impervious to your charm.’
Risarial glared, brown eyes burning orange for a fleeting second. She breathed out slowly through her nose. ‘Okay then,’ she said quietly. She took Cerulean’s stein and lifted it high. ‘A bargain. For all of us to find love—mortal love. Now we’re all of the same pecking order, it’s only fair we garner up a little competition between ourselves.’
Cerulean stood up straight and folded her muscular arms. ‘Go on,’ she said, blue eyes sparkling with interest.
‘We each go earthside, alone. One by one. Earlie first.’ She cut her eyes to Earlie who stood with steepled fingers pressed against her lips as if she couldn’t quite contain herself. ‘See if we can’t temper some of that excitement of yours.’
‘What are the rules?’ Earlie whispered.
Risarial closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them again, she looked between her sisters and said to them the words,
One by one, we go alone,
above the dirt and worms and bone,
to find a maiden fair and true,
to fill her heart with love and rue.
And when we return to under the hill,
her memories gone but our ghost there still…
Chapter 1
Kenzie sat with her feet submerged in a stream, watching the silt play over her ankles. In her hands were twigs which she broke into smaller pieces before flicking into the water. She counted five seconds before they were whisked around a bend and out of sight.
On the other side of the bank, her lab Jenkins troughed through the wet mud like a truffle pig.
It was dark and damp here under the trees but beyond their branches, Kenzie could
After a time, Jenkins came to nose at her scalp. ‘You done, mate?’ She retracted her feet from the water and stood up. ‘Come on then. Let’s go get drinkies.’
It was a half hour walk back down the canal path and up the cobbled hill to their end-terrace cottage. It was hot—too hot really, for Jenkins to be out—but the walk along the water was mostly under shade. She passed a few walkers, tourists most likely, and more than a few gaggles of geese, before emerging onto the backstreet which housed the library and the town’s oldest pub. A man in a bucket hat sat at an outside table, a sweating pint in front of him. He nodded at Jenkins as he passed and Kenzie saw that most of his teeth were either black or entirely missing.
The high street was thronged with people walking along the narrow, bunting-strewn pavements. Kenzie stabbed at the button for the pedestrian crossing. The flow of traffic was moving slow enough, the roads clogged with day visitors and those passing through to the larger cities, but Kenzie didn’t want to chance it with Jenkins. The dog was well-enough behaved off lead but, as her mum’s fond of saying, it only takes that one time.
‘Come on then,’ Kenzie said, clapping her hands to let Jenkins know it was okay to cross. The lab bounded across the road and started up the steep hill to the cottage.
The front door was unlocked when she reached it. Fanning her face with a palm, she plonked herself down on the bottom step in the hallway to remove her trainers. Kicking them to the side, she walked through to the kitchen where her mum, wearing her biggest, airiest dress, poured lemonade from a pitcher she’d made up that morning.
‘Got nice colour in your cheeks, there,’ she said, smiling at Kenzie’s flushed face. Her own short, thick hair was damp at the edges. ‘Sun’s really brought out your freckles. Want an ice-lolly or something, love?’
‘Oh, yeah. That’d be nice. Bloody boiling out there.’
Kenzie sat down heavily at the small dining table, listening to Jenkins gulp loudly from his water bowl. She pinched her t-shirt and flapped it away from her skin, feeling the sweat pooling in the curves of her waist. Fortunately, she was wearing swimming trunks on the bottom which helped wick up some of the dampness.
‘Orange or cola?’ Her mum stooped, sticking her head in the freezer. ‘Oh,’ she moaned, ‘that’s nice. Could just crawl in there.’
‘Not got any strawberry?’
‘No, you ate all of them greedy guts.’
‘Cola then, please.’
Kenzie took her ice-lolly and went to stand in the back doorway, where a small breeze was blowing. The small garden beyond waved merrily, wildflowers and weeds and herbs blooming in abundance.
Kenzie’s mum wasn’t much into cultivated lawns. She liked the bees and the butterflies and the little sparrows which splashed in her bird bath. It was made up in weathered stone; a fairy girl holding a large shell above her head. There were fairy adornments tacked to the back fence too, catching the sun through their stained-glass bodies and throwing a kaleidoscope of colours over the wood.
It wasn’t unusual decor for Kirkall Bridge, a town steeped in folklore ever since Harmon Blythe published a volume on fairy sightings and encounters in the area way back when.
This day and age, it was all considered tosh—mostly—but it made for good tourism; there were fairy trails for the kids and museum exhibitions and folklore plays put on at the park during the summer months.
Something the town milked for all it was worth, anyway. If it wasn’t for that shiny piece of history, Kenzie reckoned it would just be a waster town like all the other towns dotted up and down this stretch of canal.
Kenzie sucked the last of the liquid from her lolly wrapper and tossed it into the bin, batting away the fruit flies who had congregated there. ‘I’m gonna have a shower.’
‘Alright, love.’ Her mum looked up from where she was rinsing a bowl of plums over the sink. ‘Wouldn’t stay up there too long, mind. It’s a bloomin’ oven.’
Grimacing, Kenzie left the kitchen. Jenkins raised his head like he wanted to follow but seemed to think better of it and flopped back down on the kitchen tile again.
After a cold shower, Kenzie entered her bedroom. The curtains had been drawn to protect against the midday sun but the room was still stifling.
From her drawers, she plucked a pair of shorts and a plain t-shirt which belonged to her dad before she’d nabbed it. It was a little baggy on her—her dad was a big guy—but she didn’t mind.
Wandering over to her desk, Kenzie toggled the mouse of her laptop until the screen turned on. Sprawled next to it were all her documents for university. She was due to start at Manchester Met in September and was still finalising a few things. The uni still hadn’t let her know where she’d be staying for the year and it was beginning to nag at her.
Seeing no new emails, Kenzie blew out a raspberry and closed the laptop. The curtains behind the desk were blowing lightly towards her, making the edges of the documents flutter. She reached out and pulled them aside. The street below, a good distance from the main road, was empty apart from a gaggle of topless boys who ambled past wheeling bikes towards the woods at the end of the road.
She was due to work the fairy trail there, day after next. It was something she’d done last summer for a bit of extra cash and it turned out to be a pretty fun job. She still had some bits and bobs to buy for her new place, wherever that was going to be, so the money definitely wouldn’t go amiss.
It was supposed to cool off a bit, too, and they’d been promised thunder towards the end of the week. Looking at the crystal-clear skies now, it was difficult to imagine them choking up with storm clouds.
Chapter 2
The night was muggy and hot and dank. Earlie stood on the crest of the hill, overlooking the black countryside. Her keen senses could feel the worms coiling in the grasses, the owls scanning the ground and the thready heartbeats of the mice they pursued. Her mouth was open, gulping in the heavy air and her eyes were fixed on all the tiny lights flickering in the valley below.
Her neck was bare of the iron necklace now, two nights and two days after the revel, but she could still feel the throb of it there. Though it had been heavily coated, the weighty, shackle-like chain had still burnt into her skin, leaving a welt as thick as two fingers.
Cerulean had had to hold her still as she’d screamed and bayed, begging for it to be taken off. If they had, she’d have been slaughtered then and there. The court forbade weakness.
Now, she bore the mark proudly. A token to show that though fae-kind dwelled below the earth, they still, and would forever, reign supreme.
Remembering this, Earlie took her first step down the hill.
Chapter 3
The train station was baking. Kenzie leant back against a support, eyeing the mouth of the tunnel where her train was to emerge. It was five minutes late already and Kenzie was only glad the station sat mostly in shade.
She’d deliberated over driving to Leeds, instead of taking the train, but the need for a cold one in a pub garden was almost overwhelming.
Finally, the nose of the train appeared and Kenzie shuffled forwards with the rest of the passengers waiting to board.
After making sure all the windows in her carriage were open, Kenzie sat herself at a table seat. She removed her snapback and laid it next to her phone, rifling her hands through her sweaty brown hair. It needed a cut; it was almost touching her shoulders now.
After shooting off a message to the friend she was meeting, she sat back in her seat as the train pulled out of the station.
It was a journey she’d taken countless times, the whole way through secondary school and college after that. Kirkall Bridge only had a primary school so Kenzie and the rest of the kids her age had had to travel to school once they’d turned eleven. It meant most of her friends lived an hour away, which felt like a faff until she’d learnt to drive.
It wasn’t an awful journey, one she appreciated more the older she got. Once they got past the long stretch of tall green banks choked with brambles and dumped rubbish, the train emerged into the rolling hills of the countryside surrounding Kirkall. It was the hill to the east, the only one which bloomed with purple heather come August, that Blythe had set the scene for his fairy lore.
