The young oak tree 6/8

Abigail and Dave got back on their broom. “It’ll be too dark soon to do any proper searching, I think we’d better go back to the castle side of the Home and I’ll see if I can locate her from the battlements.”

Dave wasn’t too happy, but realised that Abigail was probably right. He knew what she was going to do and had to admit to himself that she’d found his daughter using the same method once before.

Abigail looked puzzled as she took her first reading for Jennifer Jane’s location.

“That’s strange; she seems to be right here. The direction given is almost straight down. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that before!”

She led Dave over back to the other side of the Home and out onto the lawn. Jennifer Jane was walking tiredly towards her canoe but otherwise looked perfectly fit. She stopped when she noticed the lugger and then turned to go back to the building.

“Hello dad, I’ve spent the whole day trying to find the wizard who turned Fred into a dragon. I was just going to go home, what brings you here at this time of night? Is mum with you?”

Dave explained the situation in a few words. “I think we’d better go home together and make sure your mother is alright. I’m worried that something might have happened to her. We’ll look after our side of things, if Abigail will deal with the problem over here.”

Jennifer Jane went down to the river and had just started tying Drawrof to the stern of the lugger, when she spotted a piece of paper in her canoe’s cockpit. She read it quickly, then gave it to her dad.

She was looking very unhappy indeed and held his hand while he read it out loud. “If you want to see your mother again, you must lose all your memories of the fairy folk and leave this world for ever.”

“Back up to the battlements,” said Abigail, “I know Mary pretty well now and I think I’ll be able to detect her presence nearly as well as I can with Jennifer Jane. That’s another funny reading,” she said a few minutes later, “According to this she’s somewhere around Lurbridge. I don’t think we ought to go blundering about in the dark. You both stay here tonight and we’ll go and fetch her after breakfast tomorrow.”

Neither of the Bells was very happy with this, but Jennifer Jane at least, realised that ‘dark’ in this country really meant dark and not the sort of well-lit night time streets that they were used to at home.