by H. G. Parry
“I should have gone from the last third of the book,” he said, “when you’ve come into a fortune, and you look a bit better. It’s just that I think the Abel Magwitch the other summoner has, if he indeed has one, would be from the opening of chapter one. And I thought that might make the connection between the two of you stronger.”
“No, young miss,” the Abel Magwitch in front of them now replied. “There’s nobody as to who I can ’ear. More’s the pity, if I’m to believe you’re telling the truth—which I does.”
“Bother,” Millie sighed. “We did hope—they have a Magwitch, you see, according to Dorian. And we hoped that if we brought you out, you might be able to share glimpses of what they were seeing or hearing. We’ve tried it with Fagin from Oliver Twist as well, earlier tonight, but he couldn’t hear anything. And Uriah Heep claims he’s told us all he can.”
“Would you like some refreshment before you go?” Charley asked. “We have tea and—actually, I have no idea. It’s Millie’s house.”
“You’ve been here often enough over the last few days,” Millie reminded him. “You ought to know what I have by now.”
“Thankee my boy,” Magwitch said. “That’s right noble of ye. I’d like some wittles, if ye’ve got ’em.”
Millie found him some sponge cake and some orange juice in her cupboard, without lighting a candle or the gas lamps. They were keeping her living room dark so the Magwitch of the summoner would see nothing through the eyes of their own Magwitch; only the fire glowed dimly, so that Charley could read the text of Great Expectations sitting cross-legged in its light. Henry lay stretched out by the warmth, his tail thumping peacefully. Literary figments coming and going held no concern for him, apparently.
“You’re sure you can’t sense another one of you?” she asked Magwitch. “Perhaps he’s asleep, or in the dark?”
Magwitch shook his head. “’E might be, miss. But I can’t sense anybody.” He shoved the cake in his mouth, chewing noisily, and gulped down the juice. “Excellent wittles, thankee both.”
“You’re welcome,” Millie sighed. “I think we’d better send you back, assuming you don’t mind. Charley?”
“If you’d hold still, Mr. Magwitch, or even give me your hand,” Charley said, “it would help.”
Magwitch held out his hand obligingly. “Thankee, my boy,” he said. “For the hint that I come into a fortune later in the story. I’ll enjoy that, I will.”
It was the second time that night Millie had seen somebody disappear back into their book. The flare of light was sudden and sharp, and she thought she heard a faint gasp from the criminal before he vanished.
“Do we believe him?” Charley asked as the smell of smoke and marsh drizzle faded from the room.
“I think so,” Millie said. “Magwitch always seemed a decent sort. And they all say the same story, the people you’ve brought out over the last few days. Nobody can see anything. I think the summoner’s gone dark after our expedition into his lair, just as Scrooge said. To stop us seeing him.”
“Scrooge also said that they didn’t see the summoner the way he would look to us. If that’s true, it wouldn’t matter if we found a character looking at him directly. We wouldn’t recognize him. I still don’t know how he can do that.”
“They see him as he really is, Scrooge said. As though he spends the rest of the time in disguise. Would you like some of this sponge cake, by the way? I’m having some. It’s important to keep your strength up on adventures.”
“Thanks.” He put aside Great Expectations and stretched as Millie went to the kitchenette. “If the summoner has recalled all his characters, you know, that means his criminal activities aren’t important to him anymore. He’s entirely focused on reading out the new world. It also means he’s probably unlikely to want to talk to us. I think we’re running out of time.”
Millie didn’t argue. Everyone could feel it. It was a hush on the wind, a whisper in the dark. The Street shifted and creaked at night as they lay in their beds, and walls and sky shimmered. The quiet was that of a waiting ambush.
“I don’t see what more we can do,” she said. She handed Charley a piece of cake on a plate, and leaned back against the couch with her own in hand. It was sweet and slightly stale, and it crumbled when she bit it. “We have the Street on high alert. The Invisible Man has nothing to report from your student’s house, by the way. Perhaps you’re right, and that’s another dead end.”
Charley winced. “I still find it a little discomforting that he’s there at all.”
“Needs must, old thing. Dorian’s been watching your student’s computer. That’s probably an even greater invasion of privacy.”
“Yes, but Dorian isn’t doing it naked.”
“Never assume that.”
A smile flashed across his face, before it settled back into seriousness. “Dorian doesn’t know about the book, does he?”
“Nobody here should know about the book,” Millie said. “But it’s never wise to underestimate what Dorian knows.”
“Do you think he’d give it to the other summoner if he could? Does he really want to join him?”
“I think Dorian will do what he thinks is best for him, and nobody else,” Millie said. “That’s always been true, and usually it makes what he’s going to do rather obvious. These are strange times, though, and what that might be isn’t obvious anymore. I don’t think he’s done anything—I’m still sure I’d be able to see that on his portrait. But his soul’s been troubled lately.”
“That’s probably true of a lot of us,” Charley said. He picked up the book they’d taken from the summoner’s house, and turned it over in his hands. It looked dark in the firelight. “What about the other Uriah? The one with Rob. Do you think he’s been sent back?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Our Uriah says he can still feel him. But he might just be trying to make sure we don’t break the deal and put him back. I trust Uriah Heep about as far as you could throw him.”
“As I could throw him?”
“I’m jolly strong. Are you worried about Rob?”
“Why do you ask?”
“You asked about the other Uriah. Besides, I’d be worried about my brother, if I had one and if he had a twisted version of a Dickensian villain on his tail.”
Charley shrugged uncomfortably. “Rob can take care of himself. Honestly, I mean that, he can. You should have seen him in school.”
Millie rolled her eyes, but refrained from further comment. “Well, if he doesn’t need our help, I’m sure we could find a use for his. Call him.”
“I’m not going to call him,” Charley said firmly. “I’ve done too much of that already. It’s good he’s out of this. It wasn’t fair for me to put him in it in the first place.”
“None of this,” she said, “is exactly fair to any of us. Oh, bother!”
The room rippled, just once, like a shiver across the skin of the world. Millie stumbled as the couch moved away from her, and caught herself. The fire flickered and died. The Hound of the Baskervilles whined piteously.
“That was only a tremor,” Charley said in the dark. “It’s okay, Henry…”
Millie drew a deep breath, then released it, trying to calm her heart. “Still. There have been a sight too many of them lately. Clearly not having the annotated book isn’t too great an inconvenience after all. Can you get a light?”
“Just a minute,” Charley said. She heard him whisper something; the cadence of poetry, too low to hear. A moment later, the room filled with stars. Not real stars, but poetic stars: tiny orbs of gold that danced and spun around the room like particles of dust in sunlight. The fire kindled too, with the same golden light, and the glow lit the room.
For a moment, Millie forgot the shift and the summoner. She forgot everything. “I say,” she said, and felt the inadequacy of Jacqueline Blaine’s prose. “Those are rather nice. I meant switch on the gas lamp, or something.”
His smile, again, was somewhere between
shyness and excitement. “I didn’t quite mean all that. I only wanted the fire. I suppose they follow each other, though. They’re from Yeats. “When You Are Old.” I’ve made them before, sometimes, by mistake.”
She reached out for one, on instinct, but it fled from her touch. Its loveliness pierced her like a knife. “They’re rather nice,” she repeated. “But they’re rather sad too. I can’t quite say why.”
“They’re lost love—rejected love, really. Mythic love. That’s why you can’t touch them.”
“That is rather sad, for a light source.” She tore her eyes away from the stars and looked at him more closely. “Are you all right? You’re frightfully pale.”
“I know, I know,” he sighed. “People are starting to tell me that at work—in a more modern vernacular, obviously.” She made a face at him, and he smiled. “It’s not the stars, it’s just the putting back—I’m still not very good at it. Give me a minute before I try anything else.”
“We’re doing well, you know. You’ve come an awfully long way. We could spare a few hours.”
He shook his head. “It’s not enough. We know what the summoner wants now, but we can’t find him. I can’t get any fictional door to work as a portal, even though I’m still certain the summoner did. And I still don’t have a clear idea of the Street. The summoner created it based on an interpretation of my book and Dickens’s novels. I can’t find that interpretation. When I try to reach out for it, hold it, and change it, it slips through my fingers. And that’s what I’m going to need, if it comes down to war between us. Doors and stars are all very well. But they won’t stop the summoner’s new world.”
Millie didn’t argue, because she agreed. The other summoner was, to put it frankly, better than Charley. His control over what he brought out was more focused and deliberate; he was able to sculpt his creations with greater precision; he had made an entire street, while Charley’s greatest shift of reality had been an erratic tunnel. Apart from the fact that their lives might at any moment depend on being able to meet the other summoner at his level, Charley, Millie had discovered, did not like being inferior at something he loved. She appreciated that. Neither did she.
“Besides,” he added. “I don’t want to stop.”
“I know,” she said, because she did.
A knock at the door broke the quiet. Charley closed his eyes briefly, hurriedly, and the stars vanished.
“Come in,” Millie called, and the Artful Dodger’s ugly, old-young face loomed into the room. His usually mischievous expression held a hint of worry.
“Thought youse would like to know,” he said, with a quick glance at Charley. “Someone’s at the wall. The White Witch has him at wand-point. He says he’s come from the summoner. He’s ready to negotiate.”
At that moment the Street shifted again.
This time, the shifting showed no sign of slowing as Millie and Charley fought their way down the stairs and out into the Street. The effects were mild enough to allow them to walk, but the sky and buildings and streetlights swirled about them like a Van Gogh painting.
There was a crowd gathered at the Darcys’ flat. Even from a distance, it was obvious why, and that it had nothing to do with the news that a new person had come through the wall. The building was more than shifting; it was writhing. It flickered, split in two, then reformed again. Stone and wood and glass melted together in a horrifying mess.
“What’s happening?” Millie demanded as she and Charley drew near.
It was the Scarlet Pimpernel who turned to answer her; he was in the back of the crowd. “The Darcy flat is shifting,” he said. “Truly shifting—I fear it’s going to sink.”
“Are they all right?”
He shook his head. “They were on their way out of the house to see the newcomer when it started—four of them got out, but the door disappeared after them. Three is still in there.”
Darcy Three. The quiet, practical Darcy, who spent his time reading in coffee shops, and actually knew how to smile. She didn’t want to think she had favorites on the Street, but her chest tightened.
“Can’t we get the window open?” she asked. The answer was obvious by looking at it.
“The others are trying,” the Scarlet Pimpernel confirmed. “But it’s phasing in and out. We can’t get a hold of it.”
“There’s an ax at the back of the public house,” Millie told him. “See if you can find it. We might have to smash the window.”
The Scarlet Pimpernel nodded, and turned to push his way back through the crowd. Millie didn’t hold much hope, though. The Street was still shifting. The ax was part of the Street—it would be as malleable as the house.
“Can you do something to stop it?” she asked Charley.
He didn’t answer, and she realized, of course, that he already was. His face was deep in concentration.
The two of them had tried to steady the shifts before when they came over the last few nights. Those had been shorter and faster; it was difficult to tell whether Charley had made any difference to them, but he had thought not. Even with the textbook, the Street was too elusive. And this time, they had left the textbook back at Millie’s house.
Millie could see Darcy Three at the window now. He was tugging frantically at the catch, but the walls themselves were wavering and vanishing. For that matter, though it was difficult to be sure, Millie had a sickening suspicion that Darcy Three himself was wavering. The glimpses of him behind the glass flickered like a light.
“Come on!” she called to the others. “Quickly!”
And then, at once, the house froze. Half in and half out of reality, it stood still in the midst of the shifting Street. Millie glanced quickly at Charley. His face was pale and remote. Inexplicably, she felt a chill. He scarcely seemed to be behind it at all.
It only lasted a moment. In the next, Charley caught his breath with a gasp, and the house collapsed. It split down the middle, fell to the ground in two halves, and kept falling as the ground gaped open to receive it. Behind it, and through it, a new alley splintered out into the distance. New shops and houses unsheathed from it like the folds of a fan.
Millie’s heart stopped; then, almost at once, she saw the uncharacteristically disheveled figure of Darcy Three being helped up from the cobblestones. Clearly, in that one moment of stability, he had managed to open the window and tumble out to the ground outside. The other four Darcys stood in a cluster, looking at the space where their house had once stood.
“Get back!” she ordered, pushing them away.
She didn’t need to worry. Already, the Street was quieting, settling back into its usual lines with creaks and shudders. The new alley shimmered once, then stilled. Millie breathed a long sigh of relief.
“Are you all right?” she asked Darcy Three. He nodded wordlessly and managed a very small smile. She gave his shoulder a comforting squeeze and then, for the first and possibly last time, gave in to the impulse to smooth his single lock of hair back from his forehead. “Good show. It’s over now.”
“It can hardly be considered over,” Darcy Five said, with none of his usual hauteur. All of them looked shaken to the core. “The house has gone. We barely escaped this time. What is to become of us the next time, or the next?”
“One thing at a time,” Millie told him. “We’ll get you a new house. What about Uriah? Did he get out?”
“Dorian offered to take him for the evening,” Darcy Five said. “I must say, we offered no very strong protest.”
Millie frowned. “Why on earth would Dorian take him?”
Darcy Five might have replied, but he never got a chance. An unfamiliar voice cut across the Street.
“Good evening, Dr. Sutherland.”
Millie turned. A man was coming to the front of the crowd, and that man was another Uriah Heep. His blood-red eyes were shielded by glasses, and his bright red hair was smartly cut. In some ways, he looked more real than their own Uriah. In others he looked less.
“You’re Eric,” Cha
rley said slowly. He was standing where Millie had left him; but for his increased pallor, there was nothing to show he had played any part in what happened at all. “The other Uriah Heep. The one who came to Rob’s work.”
“How kind of your brother to mention me, Dr. Sutherland,” the other Uriah Heep said, with the convulsive wriggle she recognized. “And how kind of you to remember. You don’t look very like your brother, if you don’t mind my saying. No offense meant, of course. Both very distinguished-looking gentlemen.”
There was no hint of sarcasm in the wheedling voice, but given that Charley was currently wearing a jumper with holes in it and had forgotten to shave that morning, Millie wasn’t surprised that his hand went automatically to smooth his hair.
The White Witch burst through the crowd. Her eyes blazed, not so literally as Heathcliff’s but more terribly; her face was white as her leather jacket, and she towered above Eric as she pointed the length of her wand directly at his head.
“Minion!” she thundered. A chill shot down Millie’s back. “You dare to disobey me! I forbade you to enter this place!”
“He got through the wall when the Street shifted,” Heathcliff told Millie, more calmly. He had his pistol drawn at the intruder, and was enjoying the opportunity to glower ominously. “We had him before that. Do you wish him disposed of?”
The White Witch laughed shortly. “I may wish him disposed of.”
“Steady on, old thing,” Millie said. She stepped in front of Eric, arms folded. “Did you have something to do with that shift?”
“Me, miss?” he asked, his red eyes wide. “I’m sure I could never do something requiring so much power. The one who sent me may have, of course. Very fortunate, I am, to be in the service of someone who can bend the world.”
Millie gave Heathcliff and the Witch a quick nod, and they reluctantly lowered their weapons. “Look here,” she said to Eric. “I’m sure it’s very nice to meet you, but what are you doing here? We’ve already got one of you, you know. That’s probably all we need.”
