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was out of the garden and into the fields beyond.
    Helen took a deep breath and held on tight.

Chapter 5
    Yann galloped across the fields at a speed Helen could never have matched on her bike, even on a flat road. He leapt over walls, hedges and streams as if they were hardly there. But despite his speed and the freezing air tangling her hair and slapping her face, she felt safe pressed between his back and Rona’s front. As Yann stopped in deep shadow at the side of a road to let some cars go by, Rona whispered in her ear, “Nearly there. You’re doing fine.”
    Across the road, the country became wilder. They weren’t riding over fields, but over moorland and heather, going up steep hillsides and rocky slopes.
    When they reached the summit of one small hill, Yann slowed his pace, and headed more cautiously for the next, higher, hill.
    As he walked, Helen heard Rona whisper again, “We must be quiet now. We may not be alone.”
    Then Yann walked straight into a cliff.
    Helen flinched, but the cliff opened suddenly into a narrow chasm, then a wider cave.
    “You can get down now,” said Yann.
    Rona slid down, and so did Helen, her legs a bit wobbly and her arms stiff. Rona gave her the rucksack.
    Yann turned to Helen. “You didn’t dig your feet in. Thank you. Perhaps I won’t make you walk home.” It was very dark in the cave, and Helen couldn’t tell if he was smiling and making a joke, or if he was serious. Perhaps he never made jokes.
    “Where are we?” she asked.
    “This is the back entrance to Sapphire’s cave. Catesby thinks that something may have followed her after she was attacked, so we can’t go straight in the front door. There is another way to her chamber through that tunnel there.” He pointed to a black jagged oval at the back of the cave. “But it’s too narrow and low for me, so I will leave you here and go round the front. If the front entrance is being watched I will lure or scare away the watcher. If it isn’t, I will join you inside. Hurry, please. Sapphire was scared and in pain when Catesby left her.”
    Yann squeezed back through the narrow entrance, with Catesby fluttering after him.
    “All girls together,” said Lavender. “That’s nice. If only we had time to talk about how annoying boys can be.”
    Helen was looking doubtfully at the blackness round her. “Do we have any light?”
    “You have no light in that magic bag of yours?” asked Lavender.
    “I didn’t realize we were going under a hill, or I’d have brought a torch.”
    “Never mind. Even fledgling fairies can do light spells.” Lavender produced a tiny stick from her dress and blew on it. The end blossomed into a ball of gentle light, not bright enough to makeyou squint when you looked directly at it, but bright enough for Helen to see the walls of the small cave. Now she could see dark scuttlings and shiftings on the rock around her.
    She jumped. “What was that? Are there living things in here?”
    “There are living things everywhere,” said Rona. “These ones don’t like light. They won’t bother us. Let’s go.”
    “Do you know the way? Have you used this back door before?”
    “No,” answered Lavender. “But Catesby says that Sapphire says that a knight looking for treasure got in this way when her grandfather was young. So I’m sure it will be fine.”
    Helen looked at Lavender. It was now bright enough to see her face. She was smiling. Did that mean she was joking, or that she was laughing at Helen’s fears?
    Helen said cautiously, “I suppose if the tunnel’s blocked by a rockfall or something we can just turn round and come back out.”
    Lavender smiled even more charmingly. “Absolutely. So long as the rockfall is in front of us.”
    They entered the narrow tunnel. Lavender first with the light, then Helen, carrying the rucksack, then Rona.
    Helen knew that most caves were formed by water dissolving holes in limestone. Every time she heard or felt a drip, she was sure that the