“Will!” sobbed his mother on the other end of the phone. “How are you?”
“Fine. Everything’s fine.”
“Really?”
“Your mother is very worried about you,” his father chimed in. They’d obviously put the phone on loudspeaker. “We heard what happened.” Was it just Will’s imagination or did his father’s voice sound older than when they’d last spoken a few weeks earlier? He was reminded once again of how long it had been since he’d last seen them both. Will only visited his parents once a year, at Christmas, and that was a while ago now. He only ever stayed for two days. He couldn’t bear to stay longer; it hurt to spend too much time with the family he had lost.
“Will, are you still there?” asked his father.
His mother was crying quietly in the background.
Will sighed. “I really am okay,” he protested. “What’s wrong with you two all of a sudden?”
His father cleared his throat. “Well—we want you to come and live with us on Mainland, of course, as we always have. And now Sherlock’s dead, we’re very worried about you. Who knows what’ll happen next? Come back to us—back to reality.”
Will sighed. His parents had been trying for years to persuade him to leave Stormsay. But he wouldn’t. Not ever. “The book world is my reality. I can’t just abandon it. How many times do I have to tell you that? And what happened with Holmes was an—”
“It wasn’t an accident,” his father broke in.
No, thought Will. He had never for one moment believed Holmes’s death to be an accident, but he was surprised to find that his parents were of the same opinion.
“How do you know?” he asked.
“Brock wrote to me. He does that sometimes, when he’s feeling lonely,” explained Will’s mum.
“Brock doesn’t know how to write.”
“No, but … I sent you a copy of his letter. Over a week ago, now. Didn’t you get it?”
“Oh, right,” stammered Will. “No, I … er … the post gets mixed up here sometimes.” He turned to the Laird and held out his hand.
His uncle tried to play the innocent, but it was clear from his face that he knew exactly what Will’s mother was talking about. Will glared at the Laird. “Oh yes, it’s here. The letter was given to Reed by mistake,” he said into the phone, still waving his open hand around under the Laird’s nose. The Laird sniffed, but proceeded to rummage through the papers on the little table to his right and eventually handed Will a crumpled sheet of paper. As he did so he growled something about the clan’s affairs and his right as head of the family to manage its correspondence.
Will ignored him. He unfolded the sheet of paper and suddenly understood what his mother had meant. Brock had indeed written to her. It was just that the letter was in the form of a picture—little more than a child’s drawing, really. Bright colors, wax crayons. As he looked at it, however, Will felt a chill run through him. He stared at the picture. For a moment he forgot that his parents were still on the line. He forgot the Laird on his armchair throne. He even forgot Amy and their encounter in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
In the middle of the paper was a picture of Holmes. He was lying in a pool of blood that flowed from a hole in his chest down to the bottom edge of the paper. A dagger floated in the air above him, and behind him stood the inhabitants of the island. Will recognized himself in the middle, kneeling on the ground, tears dripping from his face onto the corpse. To his left stood Amy and her mother, hand in hand, and behind them Glenn, Desmond, and Clyde in their monk’s habits. They’d pulled their hoods up over their heads and stood huddled together as if in fear. Desmond looked the bravest of the three: he was stretching out his hand toward the dagger as if to take hold of it.
To Will’s right, Lady Mairead and Betsy could be seen whispering to each other. Behind them sat the Laird in his wheelchair, grim-faced, and along the horizon danced a thin figure with a jam sandwich in its hand. The jam was the same color as the blood. And there, right in the foreground in the corner of the picture, was another person, seen from behind. The person was wearing blue dungarees, their hems stained red, and was pointing a finger at the cluster of people as if to count them.
Will swallowed hard.
That wasn’t how it had been. He and Amy had discovered the body on their own—none of the others had been there. Had they? What had Brock seen?
“Will?” asked his mother,
Will swallowed hard.
“There’s something dangerous going on on Stormsay. You have to get away from there, do you hear? Come and live with us.”
Will’s eyes were still riveted to the drawing in his hand. “No,” he said quietly.
“Please! Please think about it.”
Will closed his eyes. He’d made this decision a long time ago. He’d been a child back then and had only guessed at what he now knew for certain: he belonged here. The world of stories needed him. “I’m sorry.”
He hung up before his parents could say another word.
“Very good,” murmured the Laird as Will handed back the phone. “You are a true Macalister.”
Will shrugged, folded up Brock’s drawing, tucked it in his trouser pocket, and left the castle. He strode swiftly out onto the moor.
It was already dusk, and as his cottage came into view Will could see it only in outline. It sat crouched in its hollow, waiting for him. This was his real home, he could feel it. Why couldn’t his parents understand that? It was then, as he approached the cottage, that he spotted the shadow slipping through the bushes nearby. The ponytail looked familiar. “Amy?”
* * *
I spun around and saw Will standing just a few feet away from me. I put a hasty finger to my lips.
Will raised his eyebrows. What’s going on? said his eyes.
I pointed to the open door of his cottage. Something was moving about inside. It was the half-starved child, helping herself—so it seemed—to Will’s supplies. I’d seen the little girl roaming around the grounds of Lennox House, and had followed her here.
Will crouched down in the bushes beside me. “What’s she up to?” he whispered.
“I think she’s making herself another sandwich.”
He shook his head. “There’s nothing left to eat in there.”
“What else could she be doing?”
“No idea. But I sure am curious to find out,” murmured Will.
Together we crept toward the cottage and edged across the threshold. The child didn’t seem to notice us. She was hunched over the chest beside the sofa, scrabbling about inside it. Her matted hair was spread out across her back like the fur of a wild animal.
“Are you looking for anything in particular?” asked Will.
The little girl spun round. Fear glinted in her eyes. She stared at us for a moment with the terror of a cornered rabbit. Then she took a deep breath, and ran. Her bare feet thwacked against the floorboards as she dodged around the coffee table and came flying toward us. A moment later she dived through the middle of us. It happened far too quickly to be able to stop her. Will did step out in front of her, but she immediately ducked between his legs. I tried to hold her back, too, and grabbed at her dress. But the material was fragile and it ripped when the little girl tugged at it. She’d soon fought her way past us and fled.
We gave chase. Straight across the moor, just like the last time. Only this time she was running in the opposite direction. The skinny little thing didn’t make it easy for us—she was far more agile than we were and seemed to know her way around the island extremely well. Better than Will, even.
We followed the child up to Shakespeare’s Seat. There, somewhere between the bushes and the edge of the cliff, we lost her. All of a sudden she was just gone, as if she’d vanished into thin air.
“What if she fell?” I panted, peering over the precipice. The wind tugged at my jacket. Many meters below us, the sea thundered against the rock face. These cliffs were pretty damn high and pretty damn lethal, that much was c
ertain.
“Let’s hope she’s just found a good hiding place,” Will replied. “What’s that you’ve got there, anyway?” He pointed to my right hand, in which I was still clasping the scrap of fabric from the child’s dress. Now that I looked more closely at it, however, I saw it wasn’t fabric at all, but paper. I crouched down and smoothed it out across my knee. The paper was old and dirty and charred at the edges. On the back was a curved line that looked as though it might be part of a letter.
“I was trying to grab hold of the little girl. I thought this was her dress.”
“May I?” I flinched as his hands touched mine. He picked up the scrap of paper and held it under the light of his flashlight. “Looks old.”
“Mmm.” I stood up again. “As old as the remains of the burned manuscript?”
We looked at each other.
“What does this mean?” I whispered.
“I don’t know,” said Will, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “It’s all so … confusing. The thefts in the book world, Holmes’s death, this child. Brock sent a letter to my parents. He saw Sherlock’s body too. He thinks somebody stabbed him.”
“Who?”
Will shrugged and suddenly looked absolutely exhausted. A lock of hair had fallen into his face and it took all my willpower not to tuck it to one side. I moved a little farther away from him just to be on the safe side. Will’s eyes widened almost imperceptibly.
“And then—that thing this afternoon in A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” he began, looking intently at me. A new kind of panic welled up inside me. Was he wondering what had come over him, what strange spell he’d been under? “We haven’t even had a chance to talk about that yet…”
I prepared myself for the inevitable rejection to come, and stared down at my feet. I really couldn’t face being snubbed again. Couldn’t he just pretend nothing had happened?
“Oh,” said Will. “I—er—I didn’t mean to upset you, Amy. I really thought you—”
My face felt hot. “It’s fine,” I muttered. “Puck’s fog must have stopped both of us from thinking straight.”
“Yes,” he said quietly, turning away. “Sorry.”
He looked out to sea.
I tried to swallow the lump in my throat.
The waves roared.
It was almost dark by now, though nowhere near as dark as Puck’s fog had been. Eventually, Will cleared his throat. “If you ever change your mind,” he said, his gaze still firmly fixed on the horizon, “let me know, yeah?”
My heart skipped a beat. “What?” I stammered. Had I heard right? I felt dizzy. “But I … I thought … you know, because of the fog … I thought you kissed me by mistake—”
He was beside me in a heartbeat.
His lips tasted of words. Of hundreds, thousands, millions of words and the stories hidden inside them. And they tasted of salt, like the sea below us.
This time Will’s kiss lasted longer. And it was different. This wasn’t like in the fog in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It was more real. Perhaps because this was the real world?
The wind was still tugging at our clothes, but I didn’t feel cold. I felt Will’s body close to mine. Warm. One hand was on my waist, the other buried in my hair. I felt for his shoulders. The gentle flutter in my chest had swollen to a hurricane, and the blood roared in my ears. This wasn’t fiction. It was really happening. With this realization, all my anxieties melted away.
“You thought I kissed you this afternoon by mistake?” asked Will when we moved apart. His voice was hoarse, but he was grinning.
“I thought Puck had put a spell on you. Isn’t that what happens in the story—people fall in love with each other because the fairies have cast spells on them?”
Will put his head to one side. “Yes, that’s true. But I liked you before that. Did you really not—” He broke off. Something behind me had attracted his attention. “There’s somebody up at the stone circle!” he cried.
I whirled around. “The child?”
“Somebody’s jumping. See that light?”
The stone archways at the top of the hill were silhouetted against the night sky. It was too dark to see who was up there. But there was indeed something glowing under one of the arches—something small and rectangular, that looked as though it might be a book.
Again we ran, along the path that led down from Shakespeare’s Seat and across the fields. Luckily it wasn’t far to the Porta Litterae. By the time we were close enough to have a clear view of it, however, the light from the book’s pages had disappeared. Instead we saw somebody standing in the center of the stone circle. Somebody in a long coat with the hood pulled down.
It was Lady Mairead.
My mouth went dry. What was she doing here?
We ducked down behind one of the boulders. My grandmother didn’t seem to have realized we were there. Pale-faced, shoulders quivering, she stood looking at the open book that lay just a few yards from her feet.
Was Lady Mairead the thief? I hesitated to believe it. It had to be a misunderstanding, didn’t it? She was too old to jump, after all. And yet … what was she doing here? Rage sank its sharp claws into my stomach and burrowed into my guts. I wanted to run over to her, shake her, scream at her. But Will held me back. “It won’t do any good,” he mouthed.
I suspected he was right, so I contented myself with staring at my grandmother for the time being. A few strands of white hair had worked free of her usually so perfect hairdo, and she only had one earring on. Her lips were pressed tightly together in suspense. She appeared to be waiting for something. Or someone?
And at that very moment the book lit up again, and I recognized the cover. It was a book of fairy tales. Betsy’s book of fairy tales.
A human body rose from the pages. A head of shiny blond hair was the first thing to emerge, followed by a high forehead with perfectly plucked eyebrows. I gulped as Betsy appeared. She was wearing a long dark coat over a gray shift dress. She climbed elegantly out of the book and picked it up.
“Right, that’s all of it,” she said, handing Lady Mairead an empty string bag.
Lady Mairead pocketed it nervously. “Did anybody see you?”
Betsy sighed. “No, of course not. I know what I’m doing.”
“Good.” My grandmother rubbed her upper arms to warm herself up. “It’s taken care of, then. Thank you.”
Betsy nodded and tucked the book into her coat pocket. They walked down the hill together, and Will and I followed them. When they finally parted without a word and hurried off in different directions, we split up too. Will went after Betsy, who seemed to be heading back to the castle. I tiptoed on after my grandmother. The whole way back, I wondered what on earth this could mean.
Was Betsy the thief? Was she the one destroying the literary world? On my grandmother’s orders? It hadn’t looked as though Betsy had stolen anything; the string bag had been empty, after all. But why had she been jumping at all tonight? Why was it so important to my grandmother that nobody should see her? What was it that the two of them were hiding from the rest of the island?
By the time we reached the grounds of Lennox House, I could stand it no longer. I had to know what was going on. I appeared at Lady Mairead’s side so suddenly that she stumbled and very nearly ended up in one of the geometrically trimmed hedges.
“Why was Betsy jumping just now? What are the two of you up to?” I cried.
My grandmother regained her balance and smoothed the skirt of her dress. “Amy—you scared me half to death,” she said.
I had neither the time nor the inclination to apologize. “Is it you, stealing the ideas?”
“Ideas?”
“What was that just now, at the stone circle? What’s Betsy doing for you in the book world?”
“Nothing you need concern yourself with, Amy.” She tried to move past me, but I wouldn’t let her.
“I don’t believe you!”
“I’m sorry, but I cannot explain it to you.”
“
I don’t understand. The book world is in danger and you—”
“Amy!” said my grandmother, and there was an unaccustomed sharpness in her voice. The uncertainty she had shown just now up at the Porta Litterae had evaporated. “I am the mistress of Lennox House and the head of this family. Stormsay and the literary world are my life. If I say something is none of your business, then it is none of your business.”
“But why is Betsy jumping in secret?” I persisted.
“That is between me and Betsy. She had my permission to jump tonight.”
“But—”
“You can rest assured that everything in the book world is perfectly fine.”
I laughed out loud. “I’m guessing you don’t happen to have read Pride and Prejudice or A Midsummer Night’s Dream recently, then?”
“Glenn told me about Elizabeth Bennet’s accident. Such things do happen, Amy, even in the literary world. But her leg will heal, and the story will return to normal again.”
“The carriage only went into the ditch because the thief ran out in front of the horse.”
“Nonsense.”
I snorted. “And what about the fact that it’s snowing in Athens?”
“It’s the first I’ve heard of it,” said the Lady. “I shall ask Desmond what has been going on.”
“The idea that the story is set in summer has been stolen! That’s what’s been going on!”
Lady Mairead frowned. “If that is the case, it is a very serious matter. One which I shall look into.” With that, she seemed to consider our conversation at an end. She managed to push past me at last, and hurried up the front steps and into the entrance hall.
But she wasn’t getting out of it that easily. “Which book was Betsy in just now? What was she doing there?”
“Nothing,” said my grandmother, taking off her coat.
“What was that bag for? Why were you afraid somebody might have seen her? Seen her doing what?”
“You’ve been eavesdropping.”
I shrugged. “Why won’t you just answer my questions?”
“Because none of this is any of your business.” She glared at me. “Listen: Betsy jumped with my permission, and she is not going to do it again. What she was doing for me, and why, is no concern of yours. And now, if you would please excuse me, it’s late and I’m tired.”
The Book Jumper Page 19
