“Why—”
She sighed. “Go to bed, Amy! You’ve got to be up early tomorrow. And you’ll wake the entire household at this rate.” She turned and disappeared down one of the corridors, leaving me standing there alone.
The wound was fatal.
He knew it.
He had known it at once.
Blood oozed from the hole in his chest.
He watched the red river as if from afar.
Watched the bright drops well up as if they did not concern him. As if the wound had nothing to do with him. As if it was not he who was dying, but somebody else.
Countless drops, one after another, running together to form a stream.
Pulsing life, that turned the world into a red sea.
It was beautiful.
It was the end.
14
IDEAS
WHEN WERTHER, WILL, AND I entered the Inkpot the next morning, we were prepared for the worst. We were fully expecting to hear that another theft had taken place overnight. But we heard nothing of the sort. Quite the opposite, in fact: an Arabian man, who came floating into the pub on a flying carpet, informed us that the Sultan’s treasure chamber had been miraculously refilled. Were gold and jewels a renewable resource in the book world? We waited a little while longer for news, but apart from the landlord coming over to give Werther his post (a bulging envelope from his pen-friend Wilhelm), nothing happened.
Will and I returned to Stormsay around lunchtime. There was no sign of Glenn or Betsy in the stone circle, but the clamor of voices drifted up to us from the foot of the hill. From the sounds of it the Laird was down there, and was not at all happy. There was a heated debate going on between him and Lady Mairead. And there were other voices too.
What on earth was going on?
As fast as we could, we hurried down the path that led to the Secret Library. By the time we rounded the bend, the Laird’s head had gone so red that it looked as though he was about to shoot up out of his wheelchair into the sky and explode like a firework. My grandmother was marching to and fro outside the entrance to the cave, Alexis was talking to Desmond and Clyde, and Betsy was arguing with Glenn—something about security measures—while Mr. Stevens attempted to pacify Lady Mairead. Sitting a little way away from them was Brock. He had his head cupped in his hands and was counting the blades of grass at his feet.
“What’s happened?” asked Will and I together.
The Laird yelled something that sounded like unbelievable and a catastrophe, but he was in such a rage that we couldn’t really hear what he was saying. Lady Mairead now began to pace up and down even more hurriedly than before, and I thought back to our encounter the previous day. Did all this commotion have anything to do with Betsy’s secret jump?
It was Desmond who finally explained to us what had happened: “The manuscript,” he said, “has disappeared. Clyde and I realized just a few minutes ago that it was gone. Somebody has smashed the glass and stolen the paper fragments.” He sighed. “They were all we had left of our home.”
“They were a monument to the fragile truce between our families,” said Lady Mairead. “This must be a threat: whoever has taken them must be trying to provoke another war between the clans.” She glared at the Laird, who took this as a personal insult and completely lost it. His inarticulate bellows showered everything and everyone within a two-meter radius with spit. I took a couple of steps backward.
So the remains of the manuscript had vanished. Will shot me a glance that told me he was thinking the same thing I was: the child had been carrying a charred scrap of paper. Might she have had more than one?
My grandmother in turn had started yelling at the Laird, who was still ranting incoherently. Though none of us could really understand a word he said, I was fairly sure he was accusing our family of being behind the crime. Alexis stepped hastily between him and my grandmother and tried to keep the peace. “It’ll turn up,” she said, but she didn’t stand a chance against the Laird and Lady’s expletive-ridden tirades.
Eventually the two adversaries must have decided to go and inspect the scene of the crime, because my grandmother disappeared suddenly into the library and the Laird ordered Desmond and Clyde to carry him down the stairs. Betsy, Alexis, and Mr. Stevens followed.
Will and I looked at each other.
“Should we go down too?” I asked.
Will shrugged. “Would there be any point?”
“Well,” I said, pondering. Aside from the fact that we were pretty sure we already knew who the thief was, a few scraps of stolen paper were really the least of our worries right now. “No, I guess not.”
All of a sudden, Will grinned. “Do you like pancakes?”
“What?” I blinked.
“Do you like pancakes?”
“Um, yes. Why?”
“I could make you some. I mean—it looks like lessons are over for the day and … pancakes are my specialty.”
“Your specialty?”
He moved closer to me and took my hands in his. Our fingers intertwined. “Mainly because pasta and pancakes are the only two things I know how to make.” He leaned forward so that our foreheads were touching. “But for you I’ll learn how to make a third dish, obviously. Maybe even a fourth.”
“Pancakes sound great.”
“Good,” said Will. We moved apart. “But first I’ve got a question for him.”
Him? I looked around. Only then did I realize that Brock hadn’t gone down to the library with the others. He was still sitting in the grass, counting. Will went over to him, pulled a piece of paper out of his trouser pocket and held it under his nose. “What’s this all about?” he asked him. “Why did you write to my mum?”
Brock didn’t even look up.
“Why did you draw all these people? What do you know about … about what happened? Did you find Sherlock’s body before we did?” Will persisted.
Brock carried on counting. His lips moved silently as his large hands parted the blades of grass.
“Brock?” Will put the letter away and took him by the shoulders. “Please—it’s important. Tell me what you saw.” But even when Will shook him, Brock pretended not to know he was there. At last he stopped counting, stood up, and stomped off across the moor. The blue of his dungarees shone bright against the heather as he moved farther and farther away.
* * *
Half an hour later Will and I arrived at the cottage. We’d had to make a detour into the village to buy a few supplies from Finley’s. Now we were laden with paper bags containing milk, flour, sugar, eggs, pasta, chocolate, and some fruit, as well as another loaf of bread and a jar of cherry jam. Together we unpacked it all. Then Will made the pancake batter while I curled up in the corner of his sofa and watched him.
“So the little girl stole what was left of the manuscript,” I mused aloud as Will cracked the eggs into a bowl.
“She probably thought it was pretty,” said Will. “I mean, I don’t know what else anyone could want with those little scraps of paper. You can’t even read the story anymore—there’s not enough of it left.”
“Hmm.”
Will whisked the ingredients together. “Do you want apples in it?” he asked.
“Yes. And I want us to find out who the little girl is and where she comes from.” I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was crucial.
He nodded. “Let’s go and check out the old caves on the north coast this weekend. I still reckon that’s where she’s hiding.”
“Deal.”
Will grinned at me and tossed the first pancake energetically into the air to flip it. I returned his smile and our eyes locked. At that moment, the half-finished pancake landed with a plop on the floor. Will gasped, embarrassed, and I couldn’t suppress a giggle.
“I don’t usually do that,” he protested. “You distracted me.”
What Will served up ten minutes later was hot and sweet, a little burned and somewhat splodgy round the edges. But it seemed to me the most deliciou
s thing I’d ever eaten.
Will came and sat down next to me and we feasted on pancakes until we couldn’t eat another bite. Then he stretched out his long legs contentedly and I rested my head on his shoulder. He ran his hand through my hair. I breathed in his smell and couldn’t believe this was real, that it was actually happening. “Do you really mean me?” I whispered.
“Of course.” Will stroked my cheek with his thumb. “You’re the one that’s stopping me from cooking properly and thinking straight,” he murmured. “Even if I—well…” He swallowed hard. “I still have nightmares about Holmes—horrible nightmares. Luckily I can’t usually remember them that well when I wake up. All I remember is that they were horrible and that my best friend is still dead.” He cleared his throat. “But at least when it happens, all I have to do is picture your face and straightaway I feel better.”
I smiled. Will turned his head to kiss me and I caught sight of the solitary lock of hair behind his left ear which, unlike the rest of his wild mane, was curly and usually lay hidden beneath the straight bits. A solitary curl on a head full of flyaway hair. I twiddled it around my finger and decided that this little curl was Will’s cutest lock of hair. But I decided not to tell him that and lost myself in his gray-blue eyes instead as we kissed.
That afternoon on Will’s sofa was like an island of light and warmth in the middle of a stormy sea. We both knew that these were stolen hours—that chaos still raged outside. But for a moment, all of that faded into the background. We were happy that afternoon, despite the fact that somebody was destroying the book world, that Holmes had been killed, that a mysterious child was haunting the island, and that somebody had tried to stab me. We couldn’t help it—we were in love.
We kissed and read aloud to each other. We ate chocolate and talked about our childhoods. Will marveled at my descriptions of our high-rise block of flats and Alexis’s vegan diet, and I laughed at the picture Will painted of a younger, less embittered Laird playing in the sandpit with him and Betsy. I found the very idea that there had once been a sandpit on Stormsay rather surprising. Will, lying down now with his head on my lap, asked me to grab his photo album from the chest beside the sofa so he could show me the photographic evidence. I leaned down over the armrest, because I was too lazy to stand up and because I didn’t want to move even an inch away from Will. I stretched out my fingers, farther, a little farther, until they were almost touching the chest—and lost my balance.
I fell from our island of happiness and landed roughly on the wooden floorboards of reality. Will tumbled off the sofa, too—I’d pulled him down with me. But as he laughed and got to his feet again, I lay there on the floor staring openmouthed at what I had discovered.
They were under the sofa.
They shimmered and shone in every color of the rainbow, and they emitted an almost imperceptible hum as if they were vibrating very softly. Or were they breathing?
They appeared at first sight to be glass spheres. Seven in all, each about the size of a walnut, lying clustered together on the floor in the corner and glowing amid the dust and cobwebs. A beautiful flower bloomed inside one of the spheres; a cyclone stormed and swirled at the center of another. Inside a third sat a white rabbit wearing a waistcoat and looking nervously at a pocket watch every few seconds. I swallowed hard. Could these be…? Were they…?
“Amy!” Will was still laughing. He wound his arms around my waist and pulled me back onto the sofa. “Are you okay? Did you hurt yourself?”
I shook my head.
Will held the open photo album under my nose. “Allow me to introduce: Betsy and me, aged two. Yes, Betsy really did play in the mud with me and yes, we really did eat those sand cakes.”
He put an arm around my shoulder and I pretended to look at his childhood photos. But I didn’t really see a single one of them, because the seven glass spheres were still glinting in my mind’s eye. Strange thoughts chased one another through my head.
* * *
Later that evening I lay on my bed in Lennox House and scrolled through the library on my e-reader. Once I’d got over my initial shock I’d left Will’s cottage in a hurry. My plan had been to jump straight into the book world and look for evidence—evidence to disprove the terrible suspicion that was lurking at the edges of my consciousness. Ever since my discovery in the cottage that afternoon there was a thought at the back of my mind I’d been trying not to let myself think. Because I knew that if I did, it would tear me apart.
In the end, however, I hadn’t jumped. Partly because I didn’t even know where to start looking, but mainly because I was afraid I wouldn’t find the evidence I needed. Instead those terrible thoughts had been going round and round in my head all evening and now I was utterly exhausted, in need of a story to distract myself with. I had to read a book, right this minute and in the traditional way, or I was going to go completely insane. Preferably something nice and peaceful.
I picked out a scene partway through Heidi. The sun was shining and Peter was driving his goats out to graze on the mountain pasture. Heidi lay in the grass picking bunches of wildflowers and stroking the baby goats. I read several pages, word by word, sentence by sentence, with my feet on the bed and the pillow at my back, and that in itself was wonderful.
I accompanied Heidi down the mountain into the city, where she met her friend Clara and the strict Fräulein Rottenmeier. And I rejoiced with her when she was finally allowed to return to the mountains and to her beloved grandfather. It was fun, reading like this. It felt familiar and comfortable and I would have carried on a lot longer if I hadn’t suddenly come across a line of text that made me stop short.
Had I really just read a sentence about a young man in silk stockings and a velvet waistcoat?
I read on, and in the next paragraph I found something that definitely didn’t belong there: “Miss Amy!” came a whisper from the edge of the meadow. “It is important! Come quickly!”
I cast my eyes several times over these lines that seemed to have absolutely nothing to do with the text around them—lines with my name in. There was only one person I knew who called me Miss Amy. When I realized who it was that was calling me I slid the e-reader over my face with a sigh. I’d have to jump after all, then. I still didn’t really feel like it, but it didn’t look as though I had much of a choice.
In the blink of an eye I found myself lying on the grass right in the middle of Peter’s herd of goats. I was being snuffled at by a host of curious, twitching noses. A little billy goat butted my thigh cheekily with his horns, and a nanny goat proceeded to chomp away at my ponytail.
Werther pulled me to my feet. “At last!” he cried. “Did you not see me waving? Just now, behind Fräulein Rottenmeier’s back?”
“Er—no,” I stammered. “What’s up? Why were you—”
“It is no matter,” Werther cut in. “We must hurry, if we are to get there in time.”
“Get where?”
Werther dragged me down the mountainside behind him, flicking us through the story’s pages and down into the valley so fast it made my ears pop.
“The thief is on the prowl once more,” he explained as we went. “The fairies spotted him and alerted me. It looks as though he is headed for The Metamorphosis.”
“The thief is … metamorphosizing?”
“No. Metamorphosis appears to be his next target. Don’t dawdle so.”
I stumbled along behind him, still not understanding what he meant. “Eh?” I said, rather inelegantly.
“The thief is about to strike again—in Metamorphosis. By Kafka. Do you not know the book?”
In my head I went back over all the books I’d read in school the past few years. As Werther hustled me along a street and into what looked like an early twentieth-century city, I dimly remembered a story about a man who wakes up one morning to find he has turned into a giant beetle overnight. Ew. Insects were my least favorite creatures of all time. Especially when they were the size of people.
But the though
t that we might just beat the thief to it this time trumped my misgivings.
Werther flicked hurriedly through the book until we came to a drab gray apartment—a small bedroom, to be precise. It was narrow and old-fashioned: on the wall hung a picture of a lady in a fur coat, and in the bed a man lay sleeping. This must be Gregor Samsa, the main character of the story. Though at the moment you couldn’t really tell that he was a man—a man who usually spent his days journeying from place to place as part of his job as a traveling salesman. Because at the moment, Gregor Samsa had the body of a giant black beetle. But he hadn’t woken up yet. He didn’t know anything about his metamorphosis. The story hadn’t even started.
I looked at the giant beetle under the covers. Its carapace shone blackly, its antennae rested on the pillow, and its little legs stuck up in the air. A shiver ran down my spine at the sight of this monster. Poor Gregor Samsa!
Werther, meanwhile, didn’t even seem to see the beetle-man lying in his bed. He leaned against the window and peered down the street. “He will be here soon,” he murmured. “Soon.”
But I was no longer so sure I really wanted the thief to fall into our trap. It very much depended on who he or she was.… I took a few deep breaths and forced myself to focus on the here and now. “How do you know the thief wants to steal something from this particular point in the story?” I whispered, so as not to wake Gregor Samsa.
“Well—what would you take from Metamorphosis, if you were looking for initial ideas?” he asked, and answered his own question in the same breath. “Precisely. The metamorphosis itself.”
“But he’s already morphed into a beetle.” I pointed to the monster.
Werther, who was now pacing up and down the room, nodded. “Because that is how the story starts. In truth, therefore, there is no un-morphed Gregor Samsa. But look.” He ran a trembling fingertip over a spot on the beetle’s head which glowed faintly as he touched it. “The idea of the insect body is just here. If we can prevent the thief from acquiring it—”
The Book Jumper Page 20
