“I get it,” said Betsy brusquely. “I’m going to go and have a shower now. Unless you’re planning to make us jump into a chronicle about the Great Fire of London?”
“No. Lessons are over for today.”
Betsy stalked off without another word. I stayed to help Glenn roll up the mat.
“What was the story that fell in the fire? Does anyone know?” I asked.
A sad smile flitted across Glenn’s face. “It was a fairy tale,” he said. “An age-old fairy tale.”
The monster rampaged across the land.
It knew no mercy. It brought death and destruction wherever it appeared. Soon the princess was no longer alone in her terror.
Now everybody else in the kingdom feared for their lives too.
7
DISCOVERIES
OVER THE NEXT FEW DAYS, although he continued to show up for lessons in the Secret Library, Will refused to jump into the book world. He just sat there and stared down at his desk while Glenn bored us with speeches about the history of Stormsay and the feud between our families.
When the theoretical part of our training was over, Will would disappear so fast that I didn’t even get chance to ask him how he was, and in the afternoons I couldn’t find him anywhere on the island—but something had changed between us since that evening in his cottage. Sometimes, when nobody was watching, he looked up from his desk and shot me a glance as if to say that we understood each other.
I was worried about him, of course, as was everybody else on the island. But I also realized that he needed some time. Will had barricaded himself away in his shell of guilt and self-doubt, and it would take a while for him to emerge again. I knew what it felt like to lose a friend. For that reason I’d decided to give him some space for a while and focus my energies on the book world instead.
I was still so intrigued by the book world that I just couldn’t get enough of it. The brief jumps we did in our morning lessons weren’t nearly enough to satisfy my curiosity. I usually jumped again in the afternoon, from my bedroom—in secret, of course, so that it wouldn’t occur to anybody to ban my unsupervised excursions.
Since Sherlock’s death, however, these excursions had not been quite as carefree as before. Everybody seemed by now to think that he had fallen off the cliffs during the storm. But I had a strange feeling about the whole thing—especially when I thought about the hole in his chest. Something about it wasn’t right and I got the impression, although we never spoke about it, that Will felt the same way. But I was even more puzzled by what I found out in the book world that Sunday morning. Werther and I had just been admiring Dorothy’s silver shoes in The Wizard of Oz and were sitting together in a little nook of the Inkpot, when a swarm of fairies came buzzing in through an open window. The little creatures were barely as long as my thumb; their leathery blue skin was stretched tightly over their bony faces and their wings were like dragonflies’ wings.
The swarm flew over to the bar, and the fairies’ tiny voices came together in a buzzing chorus as they ordered a glass of flower nectar. The cloud of blue bodies then arranged itself into the shape of a hand, which closed around the goblet of golden liquid and picked it up. They set the drink down on the table next to ours and began to dive into it headfirst, one after the other, smacking their lips loudly.
Werther shook himself. “Ugh,” he said. “Fairies have no manners.” He leaned forward to sip from the straw in his bottle of cola. This was his new favorite drink, having—unlike ink cocktails—no disagreeable side effects. In his hand he held a stately quill pen with which he was scratching something on a sheet of handmade paper. Werther loved writing letters to other characters. This one was addressed to a good friend of his named Wilhelm and in it Werther described, in florid language, how he had recently got drunk out of sheer existential despair. The way he told it, it had been an almost heroic act.
From across the table I read, in Werther’s ornate handwriting, something about an unquiet soul and afflictions of the heart. You had to hand it to him: the man was good with words. But the lip-smacking fairies at the next table seemed to be stifling his creativity. The quill hovered in the air for a moment above the half-finished letter; then he set it aside and sighed. “Vexatious creatures,” he murmured. “They stick their pointed noses into everything imaginable and go flying about in stories where they have no business to be, for the sheer amusement of it.”
“Well—we do that, too,” I reminded him gently as the fairies at the next table began a competition to see who could perform the best dive-bomb into the flower nectar.
Werther massaged the bridge of his nose. “Indeed,” he said. “But we, unlike them, know how to behave.” He rolled up his letter to keep it dry, since we were now getting splashed with nectar.
I brushed a glistening droplet from my cheek and felt as though I’d put my hand in superglue. My index finger immediately stuck fast to my chin. “Maybe so,” I said, trying discreetly to free myself.
“Inquisitive beasts,” grumbled Werther.
My index finger wouldn’t budge.
The fairies, meanwhile, had emptied their goblet and were now lolling around on the table with full bellies. A couple of them belched heartily.
I thought for a moment. “So they go flying around all over the place, did you say?”
Werther nodded. “A veritable plague. Nobody in the book world with an ounce of self-respect will have anything to do with them.”
“I will,” I resolved, standing up. “Excuse me—may I sit with you for a moment?” I asked one of the belching fairies.
The fairy opened its bright green eyes wide with surprise and squeaked something I couldn’t understand.
“Pardon?” I asked. I used my non-glued hand to pull up a chair.
The fairy sat up straight, and the rest of the swarm perked up, too, and started buzzing. “Why,” the fairy in front of me repeated (and her fellow fairies hissed an echo of her words), “are you holding your chin?”
“My finger’s stuck.” I tugged at the finger again. To no avail.
“Ah,” sighed the fairy chorus.
“I … um … wanted to ask whether you … um,” I stammered, distracted by one of the fairies as it flew close to my face, wings whirring. A moment later I felt its needle-sharp teeth sink into my fingertip. “Ow!” I shook the fairy off and it landed with a bump on the tabletop.
“Sorry,” it mumbled, rubbing its head. “Just trying to help.”
I frowned. “By biting my finger off?”
“Only the nectar,” chirruped another fairy, landing on my wrist. Its wings tickled my cheek as it bent down and started gnawing at the gluey droplet.
The other fairies looked on sulkily.
“So—what I was wondering was—have you happened to notice anything strange recently on your travels around the book world?” I said in a rush.
“Mhmpf,” grunted the fairy on my wrist. The rest of the swarm shot up into the air in front of me. A myriad of glowing green eyes fixed themselves on my face. “Yes,” they buzzed in chorus. “Bad things are happening. Terrible things. Somebody is on the prowl. Somebody is stealing them. Somebody wicked.”
I thought of the White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland who had lost his watch, his waistcoat, and his ability to talk. “You mean more ideas have been stolen?”
The fairies nodded vehemently, and the hum of their wings swelled to a drone as they flew closer to me. I felt an icy draft on my face. “Sleeping Beauty has woken up halfway through her hundred years’ sleep and refuses to wait for the prince,” they whispered. “Dorian Gray has lost his picture. The Elf-King has vanished. It gets worse by the day. More and more ideas are disappearing. And not just any ideas.”
At last the fairy had nibbled my finger free of my face. “Thanks.” I waggled my hand about a bit. “But what do you mean, ‘not just any ideas’?”
“The fundamental ideas,” whispered the fairies even more softly. Their words hissed in my ears. “The core ingredients. T
he author’s initial ideas, without which a story simply breaks down. Somebody is sneaking around the book world stealing them.”
* * *
Werther and I sat talking in our nook for a long time after the fairies had left the Inkpot. What did the thief want with all these ideas? How was he or she managing to steal them? Who was the thief—and could whoever it was be stopped? But our reflections on the subject went round and round in circles and we couldn’t find a satisfactory answer to any of our questions. After a while we gave up. Werther headed back to the plot of his story to commit suicide, and I returned to the outside world, where the weather soon took my mind off the thief.
The afternoon had brought blazing sunshine to the island and the temperature had reached almost summery heights. I spread out a blanket on the grounds of Lennox House and lay down on my back, gazing up at the blue sky above me and marveling at how high and clear it was. My skin drank in every sunbeam and I was reveling in the warmth on my shoulders and feet when suddenly I heard footsteps. At first I thought it was one of the sheep wandering over in search of fresher and juicier grass. But then a mop of dark hair appeared in the cloudless sky. It was followed by Will’s face. There were dark shadows under his eyes.
“Hi,” he said uncertainly.
I sat up. “Hi!”
“I was going to go down to the beach and have another look at the place where he got washed up. I thought I might find some kind of trace—some clue as to what happened.” He swallowed and held out his hand to me. “Will you come with me?”
So this was it—the first timid feeler to emerge from Will’s shell. I knew it! I smiled tentatively so as not to frighten him straight back in, and let him help me up. As he did so, Will’s hand held mine a touch longer than was strictly necessary, and suddenly Stormsay seemed even more radiant than before. The sunshine painted bright patterns on the sleeves of my shirt and made the colors of the wildflowers on the moor even more vivid. Only Will still looked gray and gloomy, as if he were standing under his own personal rain cloud.
We headed down the path that led to the beach.
“Have you searched the cliffs too? If he did fall into the sea from there, then there might be other—” I began.
“Yes, I have,” said Will. His eyes were glued to the shipwreck in the distance.
To our right the waves washed gently over shingle and broken seashells. We tramped along the beach until we were approaching the remains of the submarine fleet. All of a sudden there was a sharp intake of breath from Will beside me.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
He pointed mutely to a shadow in between the metal ribs that looked horribly like a human body. I gasped. Though it wasn’t cold, I started shivering and my legs felt funny, as if they didn’t belong to me. They carried me toward the wreckage as if of their own accord. As if I was being pulled by an invisible string, inexorably, toward something horrific. Like in a dream when you want to run away but can’t.
The closer we got, the more clearly we could see the human shoulders jutting out of the water. They were draped in a flowery tunic. And above the tunic was a mop of dripping, dark red hair.
My stomach lurched. All of a sudden there was complete silence inside my head. I ran into the waves.
“Alexis!” I tried to scream, but all that came out of my mouth was a hoarse croak.
I tripped over a sharp piece of metal and fell headfirst into the water. When I resurfaced, I found myself looking straight into Alexis’s astonished face.
She wasn’t dead. Of course she wasn’t. Relief flooded through me—until I realized my mum wasn’t alone. There were two arms around her waist, hugging her tightly. Alexis was nestled against the chest of a man with a scarred face. It was a very young face. And it belonged to Desmond.
I stared from one to the other, openmouthed. They were both dripping wet and their cheeks were flushed. Their clothes clung to their bodies. It looked like they’d come out here into the shallow water to swim and … make out?
“Hello, Amy,” mumbled Alexis, hastily trying to button up her blouse.
I made a gurgling noise.
Grinning, Desmond plucked a shell out of Alexis’s hair. His eyes shone when he looked at her. How old was the guy? Twenty? Nineteen? Eighteen? My mouth opened and closed again.
“Amy—I can explain,” said Alexis. She was still nestled in close to this … boy!
At last I regained control of my legs. I turned and ran. Water flew up around me and splashed into my eyes. I stumbled ashore, slipped on the shingle and fell forward onto my hands and knees. I picked myself straight back up and lurched onward. I had to get away from here. Far away!
Alexis shouted something after me. Will’s voice drifted over to me too. Then Desmond’s. But I didn’t hear a word. The blood was roaring in my ears, drowning out every other sound. I was startled, therefore, to suddenly feel a hand on my shoulder. Will was jogging along beside me.
“I think you misunderstood,” he panted.
“Oh really?” I spat. There wasn’t much to misunderstand, after all. “I can put two and two together. Alexis has obviously got over her broken heart. I’m very happy for her!” I broke free of his grasp and scrambled up a sand dune.
Will didn’t follow me.
I ran blindly onto the moor, wishing I could retreat into my own shell now.
For a long time I roamed across the wild moorland. Thorns clawed at the legs of my jeans and a crust of mud formed around the soles of my Chucks. My thoughts had knotted themselves together into a kind of fireball inside my head, and all the stories I’d ever read hung like deadweights from my feet. Stories about heroes, stories about people who were exactly the opposite. Stories about love. Stories about war. Exciting stories. Comforting stories. Sad stories. They clung to me and whispered to me how life should and shouldn’t be.
To me, Alexis had always been one of the heroes. She was my role model, the mum who looked after me, the best friend who I could talk to about absolutely anything. But now dark blotches marred my bright, shining image of her. Today I’d seen a different Alexis—an Alexis who had feelings for a boy not much older than me. An Alexis who seemed to have completely forgotten her love for Dominik in the space of a few days. This was an Alexis I didn’t know.
I was starting to get a stitch, but still I ran on. Sweat trickled down my temples. I was completely out of breath, but still I ran. At first it was anger that drove me. Then shame at the thought of this incongruous romance.
But I wasn’t really ashamed of Alexis and I wasn’t angry either. More than anything the feeling that weighed heavy on my chest, threatening to suffocate me, was disappointment. It was the realization that Alexis had drifted away from me. That she didn’t understand me anymore. A few days on Stormsay had been enough to create a rift between us.
I arrived back at Lennox House just in time for dinner. I sat down, mud and all, at the table where Lady Mairead and Alexis were already seated. Alexis had a dry dress on and a big felt flower in her hair. My grandmother raised her eyebrows at the sight of me.
“I fell over,” I muttered with a shrug.
Alexis quickly steered the conversation around to the flower arrangement in the middle of the table. After a while Mr. Stevens came in with a large silver platter and, with the air of a man taking his life in his hands, presented us with a joint of tofu he had marinated in the oven with onions and carrots. It was accompanied by vegan mashed potatoes and green beans, and tasted amazing. Without saying a word I wolfed down as much as I possibly could and disappeared upstairs, where I showered and got into bed.
A little while later, when the door creaked open and I felt Alexis sit down on the edge of my bed, I pretended to be asleep.
* * *
The next morning Glenn came into the classroom looking grave. “I must remind you,” he said, “that it is forbidden for book jumpers to jump into the book world outside of lessons until their training is complete. That is one of the most important rules of all. Have you
learned nothing from what happened to Holmes?” The usually friendly twinkle in his eye had vanished. He looked hard at each of us in turn.
I gnawed at my lower lip. Had Werther and I messed something up in the book world? I cast my mind back to our last couple of expeditions. We’d been in The Wizard of Oz, and before that in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. But both times we’d been very careful and restrained in our explorations. Had we made a stupid mistake?
Glenn pursed his lips. He seemed to take the fact that somebody had broken the rules again as a personal insult.
Part of me felt bad because of course I knew the rule and yet I persisted in breaking it. But another part of me felt that it was impossible only to visit the book world for half an hour a day under Glenn’s supervision. The temptation was just too strong. “So what’s … um … what’s gone wrong?” I asked.
“Nothing, yet,” he said sharply. “But the mere fact that Desmond saw one of you up at the Porta Litterae last night is worrying. A careless jump could lead to goodness knows what—potentially something even worse than the death of a protagonist.”
Had I heard right? “Um—there was somebody at the stone circle?” I mumbled. Was Glenn not referring to my little escapades from the four-poster bed after all?
He nodded sternly. “Where else? This somebody had their hood up and was sneaking about on the hilltop. Desmond was coming back from a … a nighttime walk, and he spotted the glimmer of a book from which a book jumper must just have emerged. But by the time he reached the portal, whoever it was had disappeared. So, which of you was it?”
I swallowed hard—mainly because I had a pretty good idea who Desmond had been visiting on his “nighttime walk.”
Glenn was waiting for an answer. His gaze bored into mine, then slid to Will and then to Betsy, who gave an indignant sniff. “Jumping in secret is so irresponsible,” she said. “Obviously after so many years training I know I could do it without causing chaos in the book world at the first opportunity—but I would never take such a risk. And I think you know that.”
The Book Jumper Page 10
