by Cliff McNish
A sound came then that emptied all tranquillity from the world.
It was a scream. It was the sound of all the world’s children, billions of them, screaming at the same time. They could not bear this loss. For a few moments every child had known how empty their lives had been without magic; now that emptiness returned, and they would not accept it. They reacted angrily. Following their stolen magic the rage of all children streamed to the Pole.
Rachel cradled Yemi’s head as the early traces of children’s magic entered him. At first the magic was a trickle creeping under his lids. Then he opened his eyes wide and it poured inside, until his little body seemed about to burst with an unbearable brightness. He sighed, relaxed, breathed again. Rachel felt the magic rolling down his throat, into his lungs, his poisoned veins and near-dead heart, attacking Heebra’s malice.
Healing him.
But close behind the magic came the rage. It had almost reached the Pole.
Rachel had no idea what it meant. The disarrayed Witches felt it, and looked to Heebra in bewilderment. How they looked for her leadership now!
Heebra recognized what was coming. She knew that nothing could withstand the anger Yemi had unknowingly unleashed. It was too vast. It was a pulverizing fist of anguish. No living thing at the Pole would survive this anger: not her, not Larpskendya, none of her Witches; none of the children; even Yemi would be smashed. It would obliterate everything.
There was barely time to decide what to do. Heebra stared at Yemi. How she detested this rogue child, unable even to take pleasure from the Witches he had killed. Rachel she had underestimated. I see now, she thought, how you could have fought so magnificently against Dragwena. For Larpskendya she felt only the ancient hatred. There was no time to enjoy killing him now. Somehow, even thread-bound, she had allowed him to outwit her. That hurt most of all.
Heebra wanted to observe the death agonies of her enemies, but she knew she could not even have that pleasure. She must save her High Witches. All the finest were here. If they died the majesty of Ool would die with them.
Tenderly she whispered a few words to Mak. He raised his heavy golden head, ready to protect her for the last time.
‘What is it?’ asked Calen, flying over. ‘What’s happening?’
‘I have no time to explain,’ said Heebra. ‘Lead the sisters away, every one. Fly close in one direction, and I will keep a safe path open for as long as I can.’
Calen trembled. ‘Mother, no, surely. I will not go without you. We will stand and fight together!’
‘This is not a contest I can win, with or without your help,’ said Heebra. ‘Take my Witches from this miserable world. You are their leader now!’
‘I am … not ready to rule,’ Calen beseeched her. ‘I can’t—’
‘Get away!’ wailed Heebra, sounding an alarm across the sky.
Uncertainly, in small nervous bunches, her Witches rose from the snows. Calen drew them south and Heebra spread her four jaws wide. A narrow cone of green light emerged from her lips. Understanding, the Witches came together inside it. Upwards into the thick clouds they flew, continually glancing back at Heebra.
‘Hurry!’ roared Heebra – and then she roared again.
The rage of the children had struck the pole.
Heebra prepared herself. She had faced High Witches of the greatest intellect and imagination. She had defeated countless Doomspells. This was worse: like a thousand barbarous Doomspells. She raised Mak high, attracting the rage to her.
And the rage eagerly followed. Mak swallowed what he could. When he could take no more Heebra opened her own jaws. The rage flowed in. She held her arms wide, buckling and shuddering as the fury filled her.
The children at the Pole did not watch, or watched, if they could bear it.
Heebra contained the rage for as long as she could. Finally, with only a few of her Witches still on the Pole, she relented. The anger burst as fire from her nostrils, and then from her mouths and eyes – not little tongues of fire, but huge swollen torrents, blasting in all directions. Heebra threw her smouldering head from side to side, spewing the cleaning spiders from her jaws. Mak flopped against her neck, still desperately trying to shield her.
Heebra had time for a final bitter realization: the Griddas; she should never have released them. Only she had been able to contain their ferociousness. With her gone they would take control of Ool, and their first act would be to slay Calen, the new Witch leader. Calen would try to rally a defence, but Heebra knew her daughter was too young and inexperienced to lead the High Witches. When Calen most needed the Sisterhood they would desert her.
In her darkening mind, as her mouths closed for the last time, Heebra pictured what would happen. Calen would not hide. She would wait defiantly at the Great Tower while the Griddas gleefully climbed the walls. Calen would meet her end alone: motherless, sisterless, with only a brazen Nylo to defend her.
Heebra lay her burning head down upon the snow, and died.
20
Flight
All the children gazed numbly at the smoking remains of Heebra.
The rage ended with the last vapours rising from her body, but a few scattered Witches still lay burning in the snow. No one spoke. The scene was difficult to bear, and for a long time the children simply stayed close to each other and tried to make sense of what they had witnessed.
Rachel left Yemi in Eric’s care and tiptoed around the dead Witches until she found Morpeth. He lay on his back in exactly the same position she had left him, his eyes shut. Afraid that her touch might injure him further, she knelt close, asking her spells to determine the safest places to work on. With a subtlety and carefulness Rachel did not know they possessed, the major and minor spells combined to knit the bones and cauterize the internal bleeding.
Eventually Morpeth’s eyes parted. ‘It seems I’m not dead after all,’ he murmured, managing a semi-smile.
Rachel kissed him and moved across to Heiki. Her wounds were less serious, and there was nothing wrong with her throat, but throughout the healing process Heiki said nothing. Her washed-out blue eyes were tense, not quite able to meet Rachel’s.
At last, in a voice that cracked, she asked, ‘Can you …’ She stopped, but Rachel could read the words Heiki tried to say: forgive me.
As answer Rachel simply lifted her hand and felt Heiki’s pale cheek. It was only a touch, the slightest of pressures, but Heiki reacted as if struck by a spell. She started to weep, and, seeing that, Rachel found herself also weeping. For more reasons than either could name they held each other and wept over and over, their hot tears melting tiny holes in the snow. Finally, Rachel tilted her head at the ice prison still containing Larpskendya.
‘Shall we go to him together?’
‘Yes!’ Heiki took Rachel’s hand; arm-in-arm, they flew to the Wizard. Halfway up the glistening white walls of the prison, Heiki faltered. Wincing with pain she started to slip down. Rachel caught her and carried her the remaining floors to the top.
Larpskendya lay on his side against the harsh ice. The fleeing Witches had left his arms, legs and head grotesquely tied with spell-thread. The thread was impervious to magic, so Rachel and Heiki worked with their fingers and nails only. Slowly, taking great care, they gradually loosened and removed the thick, cutting cords.
The freed Larpskendya turned at once to Rachel and Heiki. He stood shakily, towering above both girls, and drew them into his wide embrace. As they lay inside that warm space, they had never known such peace.
‘Well,’ Larpskendya said at last, ‘we are only beginning.’
They glided to the snows below, and Rachel once again took Yemi from Eric.
Larpskendya went straight to Morpeth. He finished repairing his injuries, and then, as Morpeth struggled to his feet, Larpskendya knelt. He knelt before Morpeth, and gripped Morpeth’s arm, and for a moment, when their eyes met, Morpeth saw Trimak, Fenagel and the Sarren he had left on Ithrea. All of his old friends were there, playing with magic in the
glades.
‘Safe and well,’ Larpskendya told him quietly. ‘They owe you so much, but I wonder if I owe you even more. Two worlds you have guarded now for me. How can I repay that debt?’
Morpeth shrugged self-consciously. ‘There is something I miss. I—’
Larpskendya knew what he wanted. Morpeth gasped as he felt his magic seeping back. Familiar old spells trod noisily into his mind, searching for the usual places they liked to stay. Morpeth tried to thank Larpskendya, but he was too overcome to speak.
Larpskendya left him and attended to the rest of the children. They were gathered in various states of mind: disturbed, relieved, frightened, and weary, so weary from their long appalling ordeal. Most looked at the sky as if they did not really believe the Witches had departed. Larpskendya moved amongst them, reassuring each child, especially the youngest, giving them all the time they needed or wanted. He took a spiky-haired boy aside and spoke at length. Paul could not take his eyes off the Wizard.
Eric wanted to approach as well, but the prapsies kept shoving their heads out of his coat and poking tongues at Larpskendya.
‘Stop it, boys,’ Eric warned them. ‘Don’t you recognize who that is?’
They turned around and wiggled their feathery backsides at the Wizard. He looked up, catching them at it.
The prapsies gulped, hiding behind their wings as Larpskendya strode across.
‘That won’t do any good,’ Eric said. ‘You’re both for it now. Me too, probably. Start bowing fast.’
Both prapsies bowed at Eric.
‘Not at me,’ he sighed. ‘Flipping heck …’
He tried to twist them to face the approaching Larpskendya, but the Wizard had already bridged the gap. He picked both prapsies up and swung them close to his face. One stuck out a tongue, tasting his ear. ‘Ugh!’ it said. Larpskendya laughed and placed both prapsies on Eric’s shoulders. And then Larpskendya bent towards Eric, and they shared words Eric would never forget or tell.
Finally Larpskendya brought Yemi, Rachel, Heiki, Eric and Morpeth together. Rachel spread Yemi on her lap. He was a thing of astonishing beauty. Unendurably vibrant colours teemed in his eyes, spilling from the edges, too much for him to bear. Yet he still tried to cover them with his small hands, as if not wishing to let them go.
‘All the magic of the world’s children is inside him,’ Larpskendya said. ‘Our little thief does not want to give it back. We must help him.’
‘Let me,’ said Rachel.
She knelt alongside Yemi, prising the fingers from his eyelids. She kissed him.
With a tiny cry he suddenly wept.
He threw his arms around Rachel’s neck – and his eyes opened. Spells instantly burst out, not one spell but dozens, then thousands, all wanting to be first. They emerged in every imaginable colour and left the pole, heading determinedly back to their original owners. In a few minutes the transformation was complete. Morpeth listened closely – and heard a sound.
It was a sound of surprise – a blissful intake of breath from all children.
With the release of the magic Yemi became himself again, and his Camberwell Beauties returned. They covered Rachel’s body, their skinny black legs trying to draw her closer to him. Paul and Marshall came warily over, along with the other children, and the butterflies fluttered on them all, one or two landing on each child.
‘Home,’ Rachel beseeched Larpskendya. ‘Can we take him home? Can we?’
Immediately Larpskendya shifted them, so smoothly that none of the children felt a thing.
It was dark; night-time in Fiditi. They stood outside Yemi’s house, and normally at this hour it would have been quiet. But the entire village bustled with life. All the children were awake – and busy. One young girl skimmed like a dragonfly over the river Odooba. Her silver eyes lit the surface, attracting mosquitoes. From the dense rainforest nearby came the noise of a group of screeching Colobus monkeys. Two boys had woken them. Perched alongside in the frailest upper branches of a tree, they laughed and screeched back. Eric saw a toddler trying to fly over a leafy bush. He didn’t quite make it, and ruefully rubbed his scraped legs. Two teenage girls kneeled face to face outside a hut, changing the shape of each other’s hair. A scruffy-looking boy sat at a window, idly blowing clouds back and forth across the sky.
Morpeth gazed at Rachel wistfully. ‘Can you believe all this? And things like it must be happening everywhere tonight across the world. Everywhere!’
‘I know.’ She thought about the little French boy, so recently crying for his lovely melting rainbow. Was he running back up to his mountains now? Or perhaps he had already learned how to fly …
A bird shot past Morpeth, landing like the tamest of falcons on a thin boy’s wrist. A girl lay dreamily on her back, watching a tuft of grass rise from the ground and tickle her brother’s neck.
‘I wish,’ Eric said to Paul, ‘that I could be everywhere at once tonight. To see it all.’
‘Don’t you feel jealous?’ Paul asked. ‘I mean, you’re the only kid in the world left without magic.’
‘No one else can do what I can,’ Eric said simply.
Both prapsies nodded so hard their heads nearly snapped off.
The front door of Yemi’s house opened – just a crack. Inside there were whispers. Finally Fola came out. Her eyes gleamed silver, like the others, and when she saw Larpskendya she curtsied over and over, not quite sure how to behave.
‘It’s all right,’ Rachel reassured her. ‘Join us. What’s wrong?’
Fola lingered at the door, obviously waiting for something. Then, almost creeping forth, Yemi’s mother emerged. She looked horrified by what had happened, afraid even to look at any of the village children – as if their eyes might burn. Yemi threw himself on her. She shrank back. When Yemi insisted, following her, his mother reluctantly let him settle against her chest. At his touch she relaxed slightly, but still stroked his head as though it was a breakable and slightly strange object.
Fola shrugged at Rachel. ‘Mama not ready yet. We must be gentle to her, and them all.’ She indicated a few adults nearby.
Until now Rachel had not noticed the rest of the adults. Compared with the animated, eyes-glowing children they were like shadows, mainly staying in the background. All appeared hopelessly bemused, some uncertain about approaching their own children. One father crouched under his hovering daughter, obviously expecting her to simply fall from the sky. A few parents stayed indoors, too afraid even to come out.
Rachel thought of Mum, and suddenly wanted her close. And then she thought of Dad, and felt anxious. She spoke to Larpskendya – and they shifted again to Rachel’s home.
Mum and Dad were standing in the front porch, looking outward. Seeing Rachel and Eric, their faces broke with relief. Rachel looked happily at her dad. He was well, and tearful, and almost crushed her with one arm, while doing the same to Eric with the other. Then, seeing Larpskendya, Dad broke off for a moment and, almost formally, shook his hand.
Finally everyone turned to look at the world beyond the porch. There was so much to see. Overhead, girls danced on a slanting roof. Higher up a group of kids Eric recognized spiralled like midges around a block of council flats, their laughter carrying for miles in the mild summer air. Boys played cricket in the clouds. Other children were off alone, accompanying planes, following birds, or a hundred other things they had woken in the night. A boy in a wheelchair chased down a greyhound. One small girl simply read a book by the light of her own incandescent eyes. And all around, wherever the children stood or ran or flew, they left their telltale individual trails: smells new to the Earth – the scents of magic.
‘I knew you would be safe,’ Mum whispered to her children, watching it all. ‘As soon as I saw all this happening—’ she flapped her arms around – ‘I knew.’ She turned to Larpskendya. ‘There’s no changing things back the way they were, is there?’
Larpskendya shook his head.
Morpeth marvelled at the activity all around. ‘Loo
k at the magic they’re performing!’ he cried. ‘On Ithrea we saw some amazing things, at the end, but those people had practised for centuries. How has it taken these children such a short time to learn similar skills?’
‘No world has ever been held back as long as yours,’ Larpskendya explained. ‘Or had its magic released so quickly.’ His voice became filled with humility. ‘I have no idea what else might happen tonight. There has never been such a flowering! This’ – he indicated the sky, grass, moon, and children who moved so gracefully between them – ‘is your future, the beginning of an indescribable adventure for all children. Soon making magic will come as easily to you as breathing.’ He smiled. ‘And then, of course, it will no longer seem like magic at all.’
Everyone looked down the street, where a scared dad hollered at the sky. His young son was diving recklessly through narrow alleyways, far too excited to notice.
Rachel sidled up to Morpeth. ‘This new world’s going to be dangerous for the adults, isn’t it? Everything will be different for them as well.’
Morpeth nodded. ‘Most will be envious of their children. And kids won’t automatically do what they’re told any longer, either. If parents try to make them … well …’
‘Anything might happen,’ whispered Rachel, shuffling closer to Mum and Dad. A chilling image jumped at her: of kids taking control, and parents, not safe to go out alone, having to be escorted and cared for by their own children.
Heiki stood next to Larpskendya, watching a girl copying a leaf falling through the air.
‘When this all settles down,’ she inquired, ‘won’t the kids form into packs? Magic gangs, selected by skill, with the toughest in charge? That’s what the Witches planned.’
‘Yes,’ said Larpskendya. ‘That will happen in some places.’ He stared at her. ‘Everything you can imagine may happen now.’
‘Can’t you tell how our magic is going to develop?’ Rachel asked him. ‘Don’t you know?’
‘Magic evolves differently on all worlds,’ he told her. ‘But Earth is uniquely bountiful. There has never been a race as gifted as yours, so early in its history.’
