Charlie Bone And The Red Knight (Children Of The Red King)

by Jenny Nimmo

  Emma climbed onto the windowsill and closed her eyes. She thought of a bird, small, brown, and inconspicuous. Feathers rustled at her fingertips and she felt herself beginning to shrink. Smaller and smaller. The tiny feathers swept up her arms and covered her head. In a few seconds a small brown wren was perching on the windowsill. It lifted its wings and flew into the gray dawn sky.

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  The city beneath was silent and still. A few cars were parked in some of the outlying roads, but otherwise the place appeared to be deserted. No early morning joggers, no mail trucks, no garbage collectors. Nothing moved except the birds in the sky and a few cats hunting in parks and gardens.

  Emma swooped down toward Greybank Crescent and fluttered along the dark cul-de-sac called Darkly Wynd. The sight of the three tall houses always made Emma shudder. Which one should she choose to investigate first? Perhaps Charlie's great-aunt Venetia was keeping the painting. She had a lot in common with Mrs. Tilpin." Yes, Emma could imagine a poisoner and minor sorceress living happily beside that grim, forbidding landscape.

  The little bird flew back and forth across the three houses. The curtains were closed in every window and she couldn't see any that were open. She would have more luck at the back, she thought. But here too the curtains were drawn and the windows shut. Refusing to give up, Emma flew into Venetia's garden.

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  No one had bothered to mow the lawn ever, by the look of it, and the dry grass grew waist high, completely concealing the lower part of the house. To a tiny bird, this didn't present a problem. Hopping through the stalks, she came to a low basement window. It was uncurtained but not open.

  Emma fluttered down to the sill and peered into the room beyond. The pane was grimy with dust and cobwebs, but she could just make out a long table covered in material of every description. Bottles of colored liquid stood at one end. Poisonous potions, thought Emma, twisting her head from side to side to get a better view. Now she could see piles of sequins at the other end of the table; beside them were reels of cotton, needles, and scissors of different sizes. Bunches of herbs hung from the ceiling, and dark, shiny plants snaked their way across the walls. But there was no sign of a painting.

  Something glinted at the back of the room. The bird's sharp eyes made out another table, small and round. And there, sitting on a pile of silk, was a mirror.

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  Even from a distance Emma could see that it was very beautiful. The circle of glass was set in a golden frame and the handle was an oval of twisted gold and silver. Intricate patterns and tiny jewels were set into the frame, and even though the mirror was in shadow, it had a vibrant glow. It was definitely Amoret's mirror, stolen by Mrs. Tilpin and broken by Joshua. Venetia was obviously trying to mend it for them.

  How can I reach it? She had come to find the painting, but perhaps the mirror could be of use instead. Emma hopped along the windowsill. She was too small to break a pane. If only she had chosen to be an eagle or a vulture. Think, she told herself. Sec what you wish to he. And she saw an eagle, its dark wings spread like a cloak against the sky, a white head and golden talons as sharp as knives.

  Emma shivered and stretched. She could hear her feathers crackling as they grew and multiplied. She was now so tall she could see farther into Venetia's workroom, and so wide she could no

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  longer perch on the narrow sill. A hoarse cry came from her white throat and she lifted in the air. Hovering, for a moment, high above the dismal garden, she measured the basement window with her faultless sight, and then swooped, so fast she could hardly draw breath. Her feet smashed through the windowpane with a bang that resonated like a rifle shot.

  Folding her wings, Emma sailed through the broken window, thrust out her talons, and seized the mirror. With a lightning-swift turn she was through the room and out into the air. Success made her give a triumphant cry, and as she flew up into the sky, she saw windows opening in the three number thirteens.

  "Eagle!" screeched Venetia from the top of her lofty house. "It's got Titania's mirror."

  "Eagle thief!" shouted Eric from the window below her. "Kill it!"

  "I'll get it!" cried Eustacia, appearing with a crossbow in a window in the middle house. And an iron

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  bolt came whizzing past Emma's head. She screamed in terror and almost dropped the mirror.

  "Missed," yelled Lucretia from a window in the third house.

  Before the next bolt could hit her, Emma was out of reach and flying high over the city. Charlie's house was easy to spot because of the chestnut tree that grew in front of it. Emma came down in a whoosh of air, right at the top. The eagle is a heavy bird, and the branch that Emma landed on creaked under her weight as it swung down beside a window underneath the eave.

  Spread flat against the window was a hand. Behind the hand was Charlie Bone. He was sitting in a chair, half asleep, by the look of it. Emma tapped the windowpane with her beak, and Charlie's eyes flew open. He stared at the huge bird framed in the window, its feathers covered in shards of glass, and then he saw the mirror clasped in the talons of its left foot.

  Charlie opened the window very carefully so as

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  not to push the eagle off the branch. "Em, is that you?" he said, astonished at the size of the huge bird.

  Emma thrust her foot through the open window, and Charlie gingerly took the mirror from the lethal-looking talons. Before he had time to thank her, the bird took off from the shuddering treetop and soared into the air.

  Charlie sat back in the chair and gazed at the mirror. He wondered how Emma had managed to find it. The eagle was covered in glass. Had she risked her life to get the mirror? He hoped not, for it was still cracked, still useless. He would never get into Badlock with this broken mirror.

  The window was still open and from outside, there came a shout. "Charlie, let me in." He looked out and saw Emma, standing on the sidewalk and looking quite herself again, if a little disheveled.

  "Hang on!" called Charlie. He ran downstairs and opened the front door.

  Emma quickly stepped inside. Little pieces of

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  glass were caught in her long hair and there were scratches on her forehead.

  "You OK, Em?" Charlie asked, still amazed by what she had done.

  "I thought I could find the painting for you," she said, gulping for air. "Phew! Sorry, couldn't get my breath back."

  "It's very... well. Thanks, Em." He didn't know how to tell her that the mirror was useless. "No one's awake yet. Do you want to come up to the spare room?"

  "The spare room? Have you been sleeping there, Charlie?"

  He reddened. "Sort of."

  "Why?" she asked. "And could I have a drink or something?"

  "Urn, yes." Charlie shifted from foot to foot. "Can you make it yourself? I've got to get back upstairs."

  "Why?" Emma was disappointed. Charlie didn't seem very excited about the mirror.

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  "Because I'm kind of waiting for someone." Charlie dashed upstairs, saying, "I'm sorry. It's hard to explain. See you up there."

  Mystified, Emma went into the kitchen and made herself some hot chocolate instead of tea. Having gotten up so early, she felt desperately hungry and helped herself from a package of cookies sitting on the counter.

  By the time Emma had climbed up to the spare room, Charlie had settled himself back in the rocker and placed his hand on the window. It was in exactly the same position as before, all five lingers splayed out on the glass. The mirror lay on a table beside him.

  "Charlie, what are you doing?" asked Emma, becoming more and more puzzled.

  "Alice started it," Charlie said awkwardly. "She felt Matilda's hand, just here, and heard her voice."

  "Matilda?" Emma didn't know anyone by that name.

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  "The girl in Badlock," Charlie said with slight impatience.

  "Sorry, I'd forgotten her," Emma confessed.

  Charlie obviously hadn't
forgotten.

  "I mean it's not as if I've ever seen her," Emma said defensively. "But why have you got to keep your hand there? It's going blue."

  "She wanted to talk to me," Charlie explained. "And, Em, I really want to see her again."

  "Ohhh." Emma understood at last. "So that's why you want to get into Badlock."

  "I want to get BILLY," Charlie stressed, "but I'm hoping to see Matilda as well."

  "Try the mirror."

  "It's broken, Em. I'm sorry, but I don't think it will work."

  Emma's look of dismay made Charlie feel guilty and then, suddenly, her face lit up. "Charlie, look!" She pointed at the mirror.

  Throughout the night Claerwen had kept Charlie

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  company, nestled on a duster that Alice had left on a shelf. But now the moth was busily skimming over the cracked glass. The rapid movement of her silver-white wings began to cause shafts of brilliant reflected light to stream out of the mirror. The glass was now so bright they could barely look at it.

  "She's mending it!" Forgetting the windowpane for a moment, Charlie screwed up his eyes and stared at the mirror. But it was too bright! He got up and rubbed his tired eyes.

  Emma's sight was still as sharp as a bird's. She couldn't tear her gaze away from the dazzling glass. "It's fading, Charlie," she said. "The crack. It's disappearing."

  "Claerwen, you've done it," marveled Charlie as the moth, her task complete, left the mirror and settled on his shoulder.

  The blinding light became a manageable shine and Charlie's eyes could at last rest on the mirror. There was nothing there, of course. No reflection of

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  his face or the room behind him. The Mirror of Amoret didn't work like that.

  "Can it help you to travel now, Charlie?" Emma asked hopefully. "Like Amoret?"

  Charlie nodded. "I used it once and saw my father. I nearly reached him, but because of the spell laid over him, I couldn't quite. And then Olivia took the mirror from my hand because I made a dreadful sound and she thought I was dying."

  "I won't do that," Emma promised. "Unless you think I should."

  "No, no. Don't touch the mirror, whatever happens. Claerwen will bring us both back, me and Billy."

  Emma watched Charlie's face. If anyone looked spellbound, he did. She wondered if she should let him go into Badlock looking the way he did, shocked and already almost gone.

  "Look into the mirror," Charlie chanted, remembering Uncle Paton's words. "Look into the mirror, and the person you wish to see will appear. If you

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  want to find that person, look again, and the mirror will take you to them, wherever you are."

  "So all you have to do is to think of Billy, and you'll see him in the mirror, and then" -- Emma took a breath -- "and then, you'll be traveling."

  "Yes." Charlie's voice was so quiet, Emma could hardly hear him.

  Charlie wasn't thinking of Billy. He kept seeing the face that he had wanted to see ever since he had returned from that first journey into the past.

  "Is he there?" asked Emma, who could see only a misty glow on the surface of the mirror.

  "Mmmm," Charlie muttered absently, but the face beginning to appear in the glass wasn't Billy's. It belonged to a girl, a girl with large tobacco brown eyes and soft black curls.

  "Matilda," Charlie murmured.

  An electric shock passed through Charlie's fingers and he almost dropped the mirror. The handle became red-hot so that he had to use both hands to cling to it.

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  "What is it?" cried Emma, alarmed by Charlie's grimace of pain.

  And then he was gone.

  Emma stared at the space Charlie had occupied only a minute ago. She hadn't expected him to vanish quite so quickly. Once before, she had seen him travel, but then his body had remained exactly where it was; it was only his mind that had traveled.

  Charlie had progressed. His endowment must he stronger, thought Emma, for his traveling to have become so fast.

  But for Charlie, it wasn't like that at all.

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  18. REMBRANDT'S FLY

  A journey with Amoret's mirror was nothing like traveling through a painting. By the time Charlie had reached his destination, his head had been filled with images that would never desert him: golden sand hills as smooth as velvet, a camel racing through trees with a tiny boy riding him, domed cities, and a sea the color of sapphires.

  And then Charlie was standing in a castle of white stone where a duel was taking place between a boy of African descent in crimson and a yellow-haired youth in emerald green. The clash of swords rang in Charlie's ears as he was torn from the scene and drifted in a vast gray ocean; above him an orange sail flapped in the wind. He glimpsed white cliffs, an endless forest, and a blood-red castle.

  And now Charlie was falling, tumbling, twisting in an avalanche of rocks, flying across a barren

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  landscape where black towers leaned into a stormy sky. "Badlock," Charlie cried as the wind tossed him through the air. He was hurtling toward a mountain that rose before him like a curtain of stone. But before he hit the mountain, Charlie was lifted above a palace of black marble where flames streamed from iron brackets set into the wall. And then he was falling, falling, falling....

  Someone screamed. Charlie shook his head and rubbed his eyes. He was sitting on a very soft carpet patterned in rich colors.

  "Charlie Bone!" said a shocked voice.

  Charlie turned his head. And there was Matilda perched on the end of a four-poster bed. She was wearing the same buttercup yellow dress that she had worn the last time Charlie saw her.

  "Hello!" Charlie found himself grinning happily, even though his head still ached and he felt bruised all over.

  Matilda slipped off the bed and gently helped Charlie to his feet. "I am so very pleased to see you," she said.

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  "But I thought you would arrive through my grandfather's painting."

  Charlie held up the mirror. "I used this."

  "Oh!" Matilda looked astonished. "But I've seen that here, in my grandfather's spell room. It was a long time ago, and I was very young."

  Charlie frowned at the mirror. "How can it be in two places at once?"

  "No, no." Matilda shook her head. "The enchanter took it back to your world. He told me he had buried it there for the future. How did you find it?"

  "It's a long story." Charlie turned the mirror over and over in his hands. "I'd like to know its history."

  "Perhaps you will one day." Matilda took Charlie's hand and pulled him down to sit beside her on the bed. "I can't tell you how happy I am to see you," she said, looking deep into his eyes. "You didn't hear me, did you, when I touched a window in the picture of your house?"

  Charlie shook his head regretfully. "There's a woman named Alice in our house. She's a kind of guardian angel.

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  She heard your voice. She senses things, and she has an affect on people. My grandma's a bully and a grump usually, but since Alice came she's been all slow and sleepy."

  "The enchanter can do that, too," said Matilda, "but he doesn't often bother. My grandmother has a temper and so does my brother. But the enchanter watches with amusement when they rant and rave."

  They smiled at each other and Charlie wished the moment would last forever. He could imagine himself living here, in this incredible room with its green marble walls, its soft, bright carpets and gleaming black furniture.

  "You've come for Billy, haven't you?" Matilda asked. "I knew you would."

  "For Billy, yes..." Charlie hesitated. "And maybe you. Do you think it would work, Matilda? Could you come back with me?"

  She beamed at him and then quickly turned away, as if she were trying to hide the sudden sadness in her face.

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  "The enchanter can read my mind," she said at last. "He knows that you came here before, trying to rescue Billy. And he knows that I have been thinking of you often."
>
  "Often?" said Charlie happily.

  Matilda gave him a haughty glance. "Who else am I to think about, living in this vast lonely palace? Outside, the wind roars and nothing exists but dark crawling things." She nudged his arm. "So you mustn't think too much of yourself."

  Charlie grinned. "You were saying... about the enchanter," he reminded her.

  Her smiled faded and she said, "One day the enchanter told me that he knew my future, that I would never travel nine hundred years ahead and live in the Red King's city. I will marry and live in a place called Venice. My husband-to-be is rich and handsome, and I will travel there by boat and carriage when I am sixteen. So you see, I cannot come with you even though" -- she dropped her voice -- "I might wish it."

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  "Just because he sees your future in some crystal ball, it doesn't mean that it can't be changed," said Charlie gruffly.

  Matilda slid off the bed. "There is no crystal ball, Charlie. It is my fate. Now let us go to Billy. If luck is with us, the guard will be taking his meal in the kitchen; he lingers there for longer than he should, knowing that Billy cannot escape."

  "Escape?" said Charlie. "Where is Billy?"

  "In the dungeons, where they kept your ancestor the giant."

  Charlie leaped off the bed. "Why is he there? I thought he was happy here, being treated like a prince."

  "It was the rat's fault," Matilda told him. "He made a fuss."

  Charlie had to smile. "Trust Rembrandt." And then all at once it struck him that he had traveled thoughtlessly. He had left the boa behind, the snake that made him invisible. He clutched his hair, moaning, "Oh-, Matilda, I've been so stupid. I forgot the snake.