The Book of Dead Days

by Marcus Sedgwick

  The smoke took its time to clear, with little air to blow it away, but eventually it began to dissipate.

  Willow, who had staggered into Kepler, looked around wildly. There was Kepler’s lamp device lying on the floor, its glow still strong. But that was all.

  “He’s gone!”

  “Valerian!” coughed Kepler, still trying to clear the smoke from his lungs and eyes.

  “Oh no!” cried Willow. “Oh, please, no! He’s got Boy. He’s taken Boy with him!”

  “Quick!” Kepler shouted. “We must follow!”

  “But how?” she cried. “He’s vanished with his magic again. We can’t follow him.”

  “Magic?” Kepler said. “Valerian has no such thing as magic these days!”

  “But I’ve seen him vanish! And you saw what he just did!”

  “No, we did not see what he did! That is only a trick. He must have discovered a way out. An exit to this tombland. A door. Look around, Willow! Look around!”

  8

  Boy felt himself being dragged along by the scruff of his neck. A familiar feeling. He shuffled along behind Valerian choking in the smoke, wondering how he had let himself fall for this trick when he had seen it before. He was dragged up a long twisting flight of steps and lost his footing many times, but Valerian seemed to have regained his incredible strength, and Boy felt as if he practically flew up the stairway.

  He knew Valerian had no real magic anymore. Those days were past—he was just a theatrical showman. But there was a legacy from his dabblings with real magic that awaited them, that was in fact running to meet them with every passing second.

  As the smoke and tears cleared from Boy’s eyes, he began to look around, and what he saw shocked him.

  They were outside.

  Not only that, but they were outside in the garden of the Yellow House.

  “How—how did we get here?” coughed Boy.

  “Simple enough,” said Valerian, “when you work out where you are. I knew a little, and guessed the rest. Took me longer than it should have. Now be quiet and do as you’re told.”

  Boy felt the past tickle his mind, and he remembered days when he had sat in the garden and dreamt he could hear running water beneath him. It seemed he had not dreamt it after all.

  He froze as he felt the point of Valerian’s knife at his neck.

  “One more inch,” he hissed. “One more inch and it’s your last. Now get up the stairs.”

  Valerian, fumbling with keys while holding the knife, shoved open the back door. He pushed Boy ahead of him into the kitchens.

  “Hurry! There’s little time!”

  They made their way into the halls as the clocks chimed a quarter to the hour.

  But which hour?

  “Damnation!” cried Valerian. “Midnight!”

  He pushed Boy up the stairs, up, up, up, all the way to the Tower. He kicked the door open, thrust Boy through and slammed it shut behind him.

  Locking the door, he put the key in his pocket and staggered over to the camera obscura. He began to adjust its controls, cursing when he was clumsy with his only usable hand.

  “Valerian.” Boy stepped forward, but his master held up his hand.

  “Shut your mouth, Boy!” Valerian whirled round to face him. “Shut. Your. Mouth. Say nothing. Do nothing.”

  “But—”

  “I said, be quiet!”

  Valerian closed his eyes for a moment, then fiddled with the focus of the camera and began to scan the streets around the House. Boy heard him speaking softly to himself.

  “The stars still move, time still runs,

  The clocks will strike, the devil will come.”

  After a while he gave it up.

  “Perhaps Kepler was right,” Valerian said, turning back to Boy. “Maybe it was a waste of money, but I’m not beaten yet.”

  He moved over to sit in his armchair.

  “Now all we have to do is wait. In a few minutes, it will come. The time will come. Then you go instead of me, and I am saved. I hope that’s clear.”

  It seemed to Boy as if Valerian was asking him a question.

  “No!” he cried.

  “Be quiet!” Valerian shouted. “You have served me all these years; you are going to do this last thing for me.”

  Outside, it was snowing heavily. There was a sudden bang and flash of light outside the window. Valerian jumped from his seat and hurried to the camera’s projection.

  Then they both saw the twinkle of fireworks scatter across the City sky, and Valerian slunk back to his chair. They heard the sounds of revelers from the New Year’s Eve parties winding through the street below.

  “People having fun,” he said. “Something to celebrate. Well, I shall have something to celebrate too, very soon.”

  He glanced at one of his clocks on the wall of the Tower room. Boy looked about desperately. The camera obscura, the tricks, the stage props, the experiments, the chemicals. He could see no help from anything.

  “How can you do this to me? I’ve done nothing to hurt you. I’ve helped you all I can, but I don’t want—”

  “To die? No, neither do I, Boy. That’s why you’re going to instead of me.”

  “Why me, of all people?” shouted Boy.

  “You, of all people, and only you, can save me. We were meant to be together, you and I. When you fell from the ceiling in the church, that was meant to be too.”

  Boy stood staring at his master. Valerian had mistreated him, beaten him, shouted at him. That much was true, but he had also helped him, fed him and clothed him, after a fashion. He couldn’t believe that Valerian was really going to send him to his death.

  “But why?”

  “You are the solution,” said Valerian evenly. “That is what the book told me. There you were, right in front of me all the time. I know this now, as Kepler does. You are the answer.”

  Boy shook his head dumbly.

  The clock on the wall ticked on and its long hand slid another minute closer to midnight.

  “Fifteen years ago—fifteen years ago I made a bargain. I told you that. With a terrible price to pay at the end. What I didn’t tell you is what I couldn’t know. When I made the pact, something else was created then, too. Someone, I should say. Another soul.”

  The clock clunked and whirred. One minute to midnight.

  “Wh-what . . . ,” Boy stammered. “What?”

  “Not what, Boy, but who. You. You were conceived on the very evening that I made my bargain, fifteen years ago on New Year’s Eve. You are a vessel for me to use. This was what the book told me, and it also told me, as it must have told Kepler, about the only way out. A life the same age, as measured from conception, as the term of the pact. So you go instead of me. Then the bargain will be satisfied and I shall walk free.”

  “But I’ll die!”

  “Yes,” said Valerian, “but I won’t.”

  The clock began to sound midnight. As its twelve chimes died the room was filled with light, and this time they knew it was no firework. The light was as bright as day, brighter even, and behind it came a great wind that lifted up all the loose papers in the room and swirled them madly around.

  Boy staggered backward and fell to the floor. Valerian rose to his feet, struggling against the storm that had entered the room, the tails of his great black coat waving in the vortex of wind.

  Boy peered up at the light, into a black hole in its center. Small at first, the black hole grew in size until there was a swirling darkness the size and shape of a man hovering just above the floor.

  Then came a voice, but there was no one to say the words. Boy simply heard the words in his head and all around him. The voice was small, flat and colorless.

  “Valerian, your time has come. Step forward.”

  Boy felt a surge of pain, a mental pain that left him rigid with fear.

  Valerian stood, swaying slightly in front of the hole.

  “No,” he said, his voice wavering. “No. The boy will go instead of me.�
��

  There was silence.

  “Is that not my right?” asked Valerian.

  “Send the boy forward.”

  “Get up,” Valerian said coldly.

  Boy didn’t move.

  “Get up!”

  This time he roared the words, and Boy automatically got to his feet. It was what he did, he thought. What he did was do what Valerian told him.

  “Am I really just an empty vessel?” he asked Valerian quietly.

  Valerian nodded.

  “You are just a vessel, and you have served your purpose. You were made for me. I am your only family, and your family needs you.”

  “No!” cried Boy. “You’re not my family. I must have a mother and father! Everyone does.”

  “Not you, Boy. You don’t even have a name.”

  “You could have given me one. Why didn’t you?”

  Behind them the blackness swirled angrily, disgusting, evil colors pouring from within it.

  The voice came again.

  “It is time! Step forward!”

  “You could have given me a name if you’d ever cared about me!” cried Boy. “But you never did! All you ever did was hurt me and shout at me and tell me I’m stupid, and kick me and threaten me! I’ve spent my life running around the City, in dark holes, in dangerous places, and you never cared! Not ever!”

  “Boy—” said Valerian.

  “Don’t call me that! I want a real name! I want to know who I am, not this nonsense! I must have a life. I must have. This can’t be all I am!”

  Valerian seemed to be about to speak but turned to look at the rushing nothingness that threatened to engulf the whole room.

  And then there was another sound. It was a thump at the Tower door. Valerian’s whole attention was fixed on the inky center of the vortex.

  The thump came again and Kepler and Willow burst into the room, the door flying wide on its ancient hinges, bits of wood from the splintered lock scattering across the floor.

  “No!” screamed Kepler. “No!”

  Valerian turned to face him.

  “You!” he threw back. “You! What right have you to tell me to do anything?”

  “Valerian! No, no, no! You must not kill Boy! You must not.”

  Willow ran to Boy and they clung to each other, cowering in the maelstrom that filled the room. Other, less precise clocks all around the house chimed midnight.

  “You cannot kill him,” Kepler repeated.

  “And why not?” sneered Valerian. “He is mine, he has always been mine, and I will do with him as I like!”

  “Yes, he is yours,” Kepler pleaded.

  “He is my slave, and—”

  “No, Valerian! No! He is your son.” Kepler took a step toward Valerian.

  “Don’t be—”

  “He is your son!” Kepler shouted, raising a fist toward Valerian.

  Valerian staggered back.

  “I saw it in the book! It is the truth. Think about his age, Valerian. His age!”

  Boy struggled to get to his feet. He turned to Valerian.

  Valerian stared deep into his eyes. He felt Valerian coming for him, as so often before, through his eyes, feeling for his soul, but this time it was different. He was not controlling, not manipulating, but feeling, sensing.

  Boy felt his master’s mind walk through his, as if for the first time really seeing what was there, finally understanding Boy’s life. The years on his own, living off his wits on the harsh City streets. Being found by Valerian, hoping for so much but getting so little.

  Valerian found that his own pain was nothing compared with Boy’s.

  He pulled away and stepped back, but still he looked deep into Boy’s eyes. As he did, he grew pale, and the darkness began to surround him.

  He stepped backward toward the swirling pit, and backward once more, and fell into the dark, already a dead man.

  He spoke one more word.

  “Boy!”

  Boy stood, numb.

  The hole, the light, the wind disappeared faster than they had come, and Boy stared into space. All that remained was a faint wisp of yellow smoke that hung in the air, and a pungent smell that vexed their nostrils.

  Valerian was gone.

  Willow rushed to Boy and held him while he screamed and screamed.

  Eventually his screams subsided and became cries and then the cries became tears. He sank down on the floor, staring at Willow beside him.

  “He went. He changed his mind. He let me live.”

  “Don’t talk,” said Willow. “Not now.”

  “There’s so much I don’t know. My father . . . my father?”

  He turned to Kepler, who stood looking down at him, a strange expression on his face.

  “Was he—was he really my father?” Boy said.

  Kepler looked hard at Boy. Long seconds passed.

  “Was he my father? Tell me!”

  “Of course he wasn’t,” Kepler snapped. “I said that to make you live. I knew it was the only thing I could say that might save you.”

  “No!” cried Boy. “No! You’re lying now! You said I was his son.”

  “There are things you don’t know about yet, Boy,” said Kepler, “that happened long ago. I was simply using those things to save your life.” He turned to the door.

  “No!” cried Boy, “Wait . . .”

  “You’re alive, aren’t you, Boy? Just be grateful for that.” Kepler stooped and picked up the book from the floor where Willow had dropped it.

  “I’ll see you’re all right,” said Kepler. “Both of you. Now that Valerian’s gone.”

  He walked out through the shattered doorway.

  Boy collapsed into Willow’s arms, and began to sob once more. Around them lay the devastation of what had once been the heart of Valerian’s world. From the streets below came the noise of happy, drunken people, and from the skies overhead came the rush and bang of fireworks.

  Boy’s tears flowed freely down his face, Willow holding him all the while. He thought about what he’d heard, what he’d seen, but couldn’t begin to understand. He pushed the thoughts away. There would be time enough to think, later.

  And there was something else. Someone else.

  As if only now noticing her, Boy felt Willow’s arms around him. He lifted his head, and looked up at her face, and at last he saw the love that was waiting for him there.

  A new year had dawned, with a new, and different future, one that Boy had not foreseen. He sensed that the path ahead was obscured by many, many questions, but one thing, at least, was clear.

  Boy and Willow would walk that path together.

  End of Book One

  About the Author

  Marcus Sedgwick’s Floodland was hailed as a “dazzling debut” and won the Branford Boase Award for a best first novel. Witch Hill was nominated for an Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Young Adult Novel. Sedgwick’s most recent book, The Dark Horse, was short-listed for the Guardian Award for Children’s Fiction and for the Carnegie Medal. Marcus Sedgwick has worked in children’s publishing in England for ten years; before that, he was a bookseller. In addition to writing, he does stone carvings, etchings and woodcuts. He lives in Sussex and has a young daughter, Alice.

  Also by Marcus Sedgwick

  THE DARK HORSE

  WITCH HILL

  FLOODLAND

  THE DARK FLIGHT DOWN

  Published by Wendy Lamb Books

  an imprint of Random House Children’s Books

  a division of Random House, Inc.

  New York

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the

  product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to

  actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2004 by Marcus Sedgwick

  All rights reserved.

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  eISBN: 978-0-307-43383-1

  v3.0