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her a good seat into the bargain… But if dwelling on what should have happened made any difference, Ivy would have sprouted wings long ago. She set her jaw and kept climbing.
    ‘Oh, it’s not fair,’ wailed Cicely, as sounds of music and laughter drifted down from above. ‘Ivy, let me go ahead, I don’t need a light, there’s plenty of room—’
    ‘You can’t fly the Shaft blind,’ said Ivy firmly. True, compared to the piskeys’ own neat tunnels the Great Shaft was enormous. But there was a cap of concrete and metal over the top, and if Cicely didn’t see it coming she’d knock herself senseless. ‘When you’ve got your own glow, you can go ahead if you want. But right now, you stay with me.’
    Cicely whimpered, but made no further protest. Ivy reached for a grip and pulled herself up again, her muscles trembling with the effort. By rights she shouldn’t be climbing the Great Shaft at all, and if anyone found out she’d be in serious trouble. It would have been safer to go through the tunnels – but that would have taken twice as long, even if she and Cicely were running. And besides, it gave Ivy a private thrill to know that she alone, of all the piskeys in the Delve, could climb like this.
    At last her groping fingers brushed wood, slimy and rough with age. She had reached the old ladder. Ivy hooked one arm over the bottom rung and gazed up at the half-rotted wood and rusted metal before her, chewing her lip in consideration. Once this ladder had carried human miners down the shaft to their day’s work. Then the tin mine had closed, and its shafts were caged off to keep careless humans from falling in. Now and then some idle passer-by shoved a stick or a stone between the bars and let it drop, but apart from that no one had touched this ladder in well over a century. She’d have to make herself human size to climb it, but would it hold her weight?
    Well, she’d soon find out. Ivy took a deep breath and willed herself to grow.
    It would have been easier if she’d practised first. The shift in size threw her off balance, and she grabbed the next rung just in time. But she had no time to waste on panic. The moment her body stopped tingling she was on the move, scrambling for the top of the shaft. ‘We’re nearly there,’ she gasped to Cicely. ‘It’s not too—’
    ‘All hail Joan the Wad!’ came a muffled shout from above them, and the top of the shaft flared with golden light. Cicely’s face crumpled. ‘We missed it.’
    Guilt and frustration tumbled like rocks in Ivy’s stomach. She’d done her best, but it hadn’t been good enough. There’d be another Lighting at midwinter, but what consolation was that to Cicely now? And as usual Mica was to blame but he’d never admit it, and Cicely would never dream of reproaching him. Not the older brother who brought her berries and bits of honeycomb, and gave her piskey-back rides around the cavern. In Cicely’s eyes, Mica could do no wrong.
    ‘Well,’ said Ivy, and then she couldn’t think of anything else to say. She reached for the next rung, and continued climbing towards the surface.

    ‘People of the Delve, be welcome,’ Betony declared, with a disapproving glance at Ivy and Cicely as they crept to a seat at the back of the crowd. She took the copper bowl from Nettle’s hands and raised it high, so that everyone around the wakefire could see it.
    ‘This is the draught of harmony,’ she declared. ‘Let us drink and be one in heart, proud of our heritage and true to our ancient ways, so that enemies can never divide us. A blessing on the Delve, and a curse on faeries and spriggans!’
    ‘A curse on the spriggans!’ the others chorused – and Ivy loudest of all. The very mention of those filthy creatures made her burn inside, an old ember of rage and bitterness that would never go out. First they had taken her mother from her, and if that weren’t bad enough, they had stolen her father as well.
    Or at least they might as well