Galloglass

by Scarlett Thomas

  ‘Oh, stop feeling sorry for yourself,’ the woman said. ‘I thought you wanted to help me . . . Or do you actually just want to use me to increase your power?’

  Why was this woman saying these things? She wasn’t being very friendly, all of a sudden. And she wasn’t in the slightest bit grateful to Effie for giving her the cape. She was just being horrible. Effie suddenly wanted nothing more to do with her. She didn’t want to help her at all. She didn’t actually care if she—

  Effie took a deep breath. Blinked slowly. Whatever horrible things the woman was saying, she still looked small and helpless at Effie’s feet. She was grumpy, but then wouldn’t you be grumpy if you had to sleep out in the snow? Effie again thought of her mother. She always used to be snappy when she had a headache. She didn’t mean it; it was just because she was in pain. Effie crouched down.

  ‘Can I get you some food?’ she said. ‘Or find you a place to stay?’

  ‘You could give me that ring,’ the woman said.

  ‘What?’ said Effie. ‘Which ring?’

  ‘That ring.’ The woman pointed at Effie’s Ring of the True Hero that hung around her neck.

  ‘No!’ said Effie automatically. ‘That’s my . . .’ But then something shifted inside her and the word ‘my’ didn’t seem to mean very much. It was a bit like in the market before when Effie had lost herself in the great mass of being. Mine, yours, theirs, ours: it all seemed to be the same thing. And anyway, Effie didn’t even wear it any more.

  ‘OK,’ she said, surprising herself. ‘Have it.’ She took the ring from around her neck and held it out to the woman. ‘Maybe it’ll bring you more luck than it’s brought me.’

  The woman took the ring off the necklace and put it on. Effie expected to feel terrible, but giving up the ring made her feel ten times lighter. She felt warm, despite the snow, and whole. Maybe she didn’t need it after all. Maybe she didn’t need anything. She suddenly felt herself drifting like a snowflake into a world of many, many snowflakes where all that mattered was falling faintly, faintly falling through the air, and—

  ‘Now give me your necklace,’ came the woman’s sharp voice.

  Effie’s Sword of Light necklace was her most precious possession. But what really was a possession anyway? Did a snowflake need possessions? Did the sun or the moon have possessions? And in any case Effie’s necklace had also only brought her trouble. Of course, she loved it. But did it really make sense to love an object like that? Something that could be lost or broken or stolen? What if the object was removed but love remained? What would happen if that happened to all objects and all possessions? What if people chose love instead? After all, objects tarnish eventually, and decompose. But love and light never change. They are constant and glorious and—

  ‘Here,’ said Effie. She unclasped the necklace and—

  and—

  snowflakes falling, falling, then—

  The snow was gone. Effie was suddenly in a magnificent castle with a purple crushed-velvet carpet and a massive throne that changed into a head teacher’s comfortable old study that changed into a tennis court with an umpire’s chair that changed into Cosmo’s tower room and then back into the magnificent castle again. On the throne sat the homeless woman, wearing a massive diamond crown. On closer inspection, though, the crown was made of ice crystals on a garland of leaves and . . .

  Now the scene changed again. It was summer, and Effie was walking barefoot over grass towards a small cottage. Outside, the same woman sat in a rocking chair knitting something.

  Effie approached her.

  ‘Please take this,’ Effie said, holding out her Sword of Light necklace.

  ‘I don’t need it any more than you do,’ said the woman.

  ‘No,’ said Effie. ‘But please take it. And have this vial of deepwater too. And my bag. And I don’t think I need clothes any more or even my body—’

  ‘You’re right,’ the woman said. ‘A true hero doesn’t need anything. You don’t need anything. You don’t even need yourself. Not this lower self, anyway, this silly old bag of bones. And of course, when it comes to the higher self, we’re all one. But most people find that terrifying, and spend their whole lives resisting it. And so they live again and again in the Realworld until they find out enough to go to the Otherworld, and then the learning begins again, in a different way.’

  Effie felt herself beginning to float into the air in front of the woman’s cottage. She seemed to blink in and out of existence, like a twinkling star. It was a curious feeling. If she was just brave enough to let go of this . . . Of herself, whatever that was. If she could just . . .

  The woman spoke again, and this time it was with a voice Effie recognised, although she had never heard it before.

  ‘Will you give everything to me?’ it asked.

  Effie hesitated.

  ‘Will you give yourself up to the mystery and depth of the unknown? I can’t tell you what’s in it or how it will feel. You may never know your lower self again, but without casting off your lower self, you can have no idea of who your higher self really is.’

  Effie hesitated again. After all, who chooses to give up him or herself? It would be like choosing to die. But it didn’t feel as if that was what Effie was being offered. It wasn’t death being put in front of her, but eternal life.

  ‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘Yes. I’ll give myself . . .’

  ‘I still think,’ Lady Tchainsaw was saying, ‘that my cut-up poem No Flow will achieve the best result. If we disconnect the Flow, then we remove the link between the worlds. I have done a lot of research on this, and I am sure that once this connection is severed, magical energy will return to the Realworld.’

  ‘She would think that,’ said Jupiter Peacock to Gotthard Forestfloor. ‘Any opportunity to push her dreadful so-called poetry. But I still say all we need to do is to put my new edition of Galloglass in the Great Library. I have removed the Flow from Hieronymus Moon’s great vision and restored the poem to the individualist glory that Moon so very nearly achieved . . . I confess that while doing it I felt a little like Ezra Pound editing T.S. Eliot, or . . .’ He visibly struggled to think of another example of a famous writer being edited by another famous person.

  ‘You may as well be a cut-up poet yourself,’ said Lady Tchainsaw. ‘You’ve certainly messed around with your original at least as much as I have with mine. You call yourself a translator!’

  ‘Oh, really?’ said JP. He picked up the Special Collections edition of The Flow by Thomas Lumas that was on Lady Tchainsaw’s coffee table. Bits of paper fluttered out. He opened the volume and shook his head. Inside, the book had been completely destroyed by Lady Tchainsaw. She had erased words, cut some out with a scalpel, rearranged others and drawn over whole pages in fluorescent green highlighter. Selected parts of the book – the parts, presumably, that Lady Tchainsaw approved of – had been badly pasted on an A5 sheet of paper and given the title No Flow. It looked like something you might do on a rainy Wednesday afternoon at primary school.

  ‘Is that a library book?’ said Gotthard Forestfloor. ‘For pity’s sake.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be so precious,’ said Lady Tchainsaw. ‘You’re planning to wipe out much of the known universe and you’re worried about a library book? You ridiculous man.’

  Gotthard Forestfloor fixed Lady Tchainsaw with an evil stare.

  ‘Anyway,’ said JP, ‘on with our plans for tonight. It seems rather a shame that Terrence Deer-Hart never wrote the book we commissioned from him. Is he going to be able to pull off the kidnap at least?’

  Terrence Deer-Hart hadn’t added anything to this conversation so far. He had been looking at Lady Tchainsaw and imagining what it would be like to kiss her.

  ‘I think so,’ said Lady Tchainsaw. ‘I’ll go through it all again with him.’ She sighed. ‘It’s not easy, though.’

  ‘And when you get Effie Truelove back here Terrence is going to do pedesis on her and find out how she goes to the Great Library? Then he’s going t
o tell you, and then you are going to tell us.’

  ‘Pah!’ said Gotthard Forestfloor. ‘Why can we not find a mage to join us?’

  ‘I’m a mage,’ said Terrence.

  ‘Oh, shut up,’ said Forestfloor, witheringly. He looked at Lady Tchainsaw. ‘Tell me why you are not doing the pedesis yourself?’

  ‘Because everyone who does pedesis dies,’ she replied. ‘There is a disclaimer at the front of Thomas Lumas’s book.’

  ‘I see, yes. No one will mind if we sacrifice him.’

  ‘Quite. I’m not sure he’ll even notice himself.’

  Terrence had drifted off again.

  ‘And then we keep the Truelove girl and use her as a portal during the ceremony?’ said Forestfloor.

  ‘Exactly,’ said JP. ‘I’ve had intelligence that confirms that the portal is actually inside her. But killing her should release it momentarily, and then we can use it.’

  ‘And remind me why we’re not doing this in a nice, quiet back room? Why must we perform this complex, frankly ridiculous-sounding spell in front of your lecture audience? Is it because you’re an enormous prima donna, or do you want to deliver twelve minutes of your lecture to see if boredom will kill everyone quicker than the spell does?’ Gotthard Forestfloor smiled at his own joke.

  ‘The spell is the highest level of the darkest magic and so needs an audience,’ JP replied. ‘It needs awe in order to work.’

  Forestfloor sighed. ‘Well, you’re the alchemist. It still sounds stupid to me. How can a spell need “awe”?’

  JP shrugged. ‘This one does. And a lot of space, too. The Grand Lecture Theatre is perfect.’

  ‘Right. And do we have the yeti?’

  ‘Yes. It escaped briefly, but we now have it back.’

  ‘Excellent. And the maiden?’

  ‘Yep. The original one pulled out, but we have a replacement lined up.’

  ‘And the cats?’

  ‘On their way.’

  ‘Well, all we need to do now is decide what book we’re putting in. I still think that the novel form is the purest. My book, The Bleak Midwinter, sets out our philosophical position very clearly. It can’t be misread like a poem.’

  ‘Maybe we should just put them all in,’ suggested Lady Tchainsaw.

  ‘Yes, perhaps you’re right,’ said Forestfloor. ‘They don’t contradict each other, so it would probably work. As long as between them they clash strongly enough with whatever’s already in there. My research suggests that this is all that’s needed to wipe everything out. And then we can start again. Do it our way, with the purer magic that will gush forth once the Flow is gone.’

  ‘Are you absolutely sure the Flow should be removed?’ asked Lady Tchainsaw. ‘In the library book it mentioned that the Flow is the fundamental force of the universe and without it all that would be left is an unimaginable vacuum of darkness and sorrow.’

  ‘Yes, but you’ve cut that bit out presumably?’ said JP.

  ‘Indeed,’ said Lady Tchainsaw.

  ‘Good,’ said Gotthard Forestfloor. ‘Onwards, then, to tonight!’

  23

  Raven said goodbye to Marcel and Hazel Bottle and flew as fast as she could back to the university. At first she thought she’d misunderstood Lexy. A yeti? But then she remembered that the spell she’d overheard in the library had included the eye of a live yeti. The Diberi must have got a yeti from somewhere and Lexy must have rescued it.

  She landed in the fresh snow next to the old Portakabin by the university’s back gates. The door was open and cold air was blowing through the small structure. There was a chair lying on its side, and a desk that had been tipped over. The yeti was gone. Had it escaped on its own, or did the Diberi have it back?

  Raven shivered. She hoped the yeti was all right. She wrote Lexy a quick message on her pager and then got back on her broomstick. The snowstorm was intensifying, and darkness was coming too. She’d need to get to the cats’ home as quickly as she could. Presumably the Diberi had most of the other ingredients for their terrible spell. But if she could just manage to warn the cats . . .

  Raven landed smoothly in the grounds of the cats’ home, just behind an extraordinary piece of topiary – a yew hedge in the shape of a cat’s head. It was a good thing Raven had a broomstick because whoever was in charge had locked the gates and electrified the fence. As soon as Raven landed she cast the Shadows. It was chaos. There were cats everywhere, and several humans dressed in butler or maid outfits running around with butterfly nets trying to catch them. There were miniature top hats and tiaras lying discarded on the ground. Raven was having trouble making sense of what was going on.

  The cat nearest to her was black with white socks.

  ‘What’s happening?’ Raven asked him, taking the spell off herself so he could see her.

  ‘Total revolution,’ he said back.

  ‘Why?’ she asked.

  ‘Because we’ve awoken. Because of the Free Cats League.’

  ‘The Free Cats League?’

  ‘Yep. That’s right. They’ve told us all about how this luxury is just a different sort of captivity, and how a human group are planning to use us in a big spell. Many of us were due to die tonight. Not any more. We want freedom for all!’

  ‘So you already know about the spell?’ said Raven. ‘Who’s in charge of this Free Cats League? Can you take me to them?’

  ‘I can try. My name’s Socks. And yours?’

  ‘Raven. Let’s hurry.’

  Raven cast the Shadows on Socks as well as herself and then followed him in through the main door and down some servants’ stairs into a basement.

  ‘I don’t know how a human gets beyond here,’ said Socks. ‘We go through there.’ He indicated a hole in the skirting board.

  A man and a woman in formal clothes walked past but didn’t notice Raven and Socks because of the Shadows.

  ‘Bloody cats,’ the man was saying to the woman. ‘If we can’t deliver a hundred of them to the university by seven-thirty this evening then the whole deal’s off. The funding’s being withdrawn and no one’s getting paid. That’s basically just under a billion quid down the drain.’

  ‘You underestimate me,’ said the woman.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The so-called Free Cats League were ordering in their own seaweed kibble. We drugged it. Now we’ve got just a hundred of the most revolutionary ones in the back of the van. Job done.’

  ‘You genius.’

  Raven looked at Socks.

  ‘Oh no,’ he said.

  Raven tried a couple of doors and found that one led to some stairs. Yes, this was the direct way down to the basement area. Once they reached the bottom of the stairs Socks sniffed out the way to the secret room the cats had been using.

  Inside was a scene of devastation. Broken musical instruments were lying on the ground and tables and chairs were overturned. Bowls of water had been spilt. Bits of kibble were strewn all over the floor.

  ‘This is terrible!’ said Socks. ‘If they’ve got our leaders then I don’t know what we’ll do.’

  ‘All right,’ said Raven. ‘You go back and do what you have to do upstairs. Keep the revolution going. That’s the most important thing you can do now. Thanks for your help. I’ll find this van, and . . .’

  Socks hurried out of the room. Raven’s seventh sense was telling her something that she couldn’t completely understand. But she was picking up a powerful message from somewhere just over by the stage.

  Yes. Under the table. Unconscious, but . . .

  Familiar, somehow.

  It was the school cat. The violent one. The one the children weren’t allowed to go near. But he seemed different somehow. He’d changed in some unfathomable way, and not just because he was unconscious.

  Raven reached out and touched his fur. He was warm. Breathing. She took her wonde out of her backpack and held it just above his head while she said a healing spell. Lexy made Raven carry a vial of high potency homoeopathic arnica t
ablets wherever she went. As soon as Neptune was conscious Raven held one out to him and he took it with his rough tongue. He blinked a few times, and then moved his head. Raven now gave him a dose of homoeopathic arsenicum. In homoeopathy like cures like, and so a case of poisoning could often be helped with a minute dose of the deadly poison arsenic.

  ‘Who are you?’ Neptune said weakly. ‘You smell familiar.’

  Familiar.

  So did he. It was hard to describe, but a heavenly warm smell was coming from his fur. It was floral, grassy, a bit like coriander flowers in the sunshine. Raven felt sort of fuzzy-headed for a second. It was as if she’d drunk a glass of her mother’s wine.

  Neptune opened his eyes.

  He looked up at Raven. When her eyes met his, the effect was electrifying. It was like falling in love instantly. Raven knew that from this moment she and this cat – whose name she didn’t even know – were going to be inseparable.

  ‘It’s you,’ he said.

  She took a deep breath. ‘At last. I knew I’d find you.’

  ‘My witch,’ he said.

  ‘My familiar,’ she said.

  ‘Where are the others?’ Neptune asked. ‘Mirabelle? Malvasia?’

  ‘They’re being taken to the university. We have to rescue them.’

  Neptune stood up.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Raven asked.

  ‘Yes, I think so,’ said Neptune. ‘Thank you for coming for me. I’m Neptune, by the way.’

  Raven nodded. ‘I’m Raven. We’ll look after each other from now on. Let’s go.’

  In a strange dimension both near and far away, Effie Truelove was turning somersaults through the air. Her body felt entirely weightless. Downdowndown she went, and then flip, and then upupup. It was like a sort of cosmic ballet. All that was Effie – her headstrong nature, her desire for truth, her desire to be special, her loyalty to her friends, her love of her family, her great ability at tennis, the strength and coordination that would make her a great dancer in the physical world if she ever tried, her favourite breakfasts, the one time she rode a horse – all this swirled out of her and into the silent starry night in which she’d found herself. The less she became, the more she was. The more of herself she gave, the more power she had. It was paradoxical, and amazing. She seemed to be exchanging her soul for the entire universe.