The Chosen Ones

by Scarlett Thomas

  ‘Raven? What’s happening?’

  She opened her eyes. ‘It’s the Cosmic Web,’ she said. ‘But . . .’

  ‘What is it? Something about Albion Freake?’ said Wolf. ‘Or . . .?’ He couldn’t say Effie. He couldn’t let her know how frightened he was in case it made it worse somehow. But inside he desperately hoped the Cosmic Web was saying that Effie was now safe, that Raven’s spell had worked, that everything was going to be OK on Friday.

  ‘No,’ said Raven. ‘Something about . . . about my mother. I can hear the mice chattering under the floorboards and they keep saying something about the “red-haired one who writes of fictional magic”, which is what they always call her. But I can’t work out exactly what they’re saying. And now they’re chattering about the shooting stars again.’

  ‘Do you think your mum knows about Skylurian’s plans?’ Effie asked.

  Raven looked sad. ‘Do you mean do I think my mother is secretly a Diberi?’ she said.

  ‘No,’ said Effie, touching her friend’s arm. ‘I didn’t mean it like that at all. I only meant—’

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Raven. ‘It’s not like I haven’t wondered. I mean, all the time she spends with Skylurian Midzhar can’t be healthy. And I always thought there was something suspicious about this limited-edition single-volume plan. But then Skylurian is Mum’s publisher. Mum has to do what she says. And Skylurian keeps going on about all the money they’ll make from Albion Freake. My mum stands to get quite a lot. I think she’s planning to give some of it to charity . . .’

  And use the rest to fund the lavish lifestyle to which she and Raven had been becoming so accustomed. Unlimited accounts at all the best shops in the Old Town, new clothes whenever they both liked, including hand-made silk gowns, antique nightdresses, and the vast cashmere shawls Laurel loved so much. The tasteful dinner parties, staffed by faithful members of the village and attended by the most important publishing people in the whole North. The vintage champagne, the elegant live music, the magical supplies for Raven that would soon become unlimited . . .

  ‘She means well,’ said Raven. ‘But she does love money and nice things. So she does whatever Skylurian tells her. But she’s not bad. Not really.’

  ‘I don’t think she’s bad,’ said Effie. ‘Not at all.’

  ‘I just wonder where on earth she is,’ said Raven.

  ‘We’ll find out,’ said Wolf. ‘Don’t worry.’

  Effie breathed in more air than she meant to and then found herself sighing out deeply. She’d last seen her own mother on the night of the worldquake five years before. According to Effie’s father, Aurelia Truelove had died that night. But Effie still wasn’t sure. Her mother had travelled to the Otherworld and then . . .

  Whenever Effie tried to ask Cosmo about it he said she would find out when the time was right. Effie knew she had to be patient and strong, but sometimes it was hard. She would give anything for just one more chance to hear her mother say her name or kiss her goodnight. Sometimes Effie dreamed of her mother. These were always sad dreams, because they always ended with the worldquake and Effie waking up to find her mother gone.

  Effie remembered her father telling Aurelia off for ‘smothering’ her daughter. ‘Let her grow up,’ he’d said. ‘Learn to stand on her own two feet.’ Effie had only been six at the time. But soon she had no choice but to learn to cope by herself. After Aurelia was gone Effie had felt more alone than anyone in the world. Until, that is, her grandfather had started looking after her. But that had just been on school days. Effie’s weekends were long, sad and cold. If she felt hungry, she had to make her own soup. If she felt bored, all she could do was daydream. Effie loved reading, but all the interesting books had always been at her grandfather’s place. Effie’s father’s books were all in different languages and kept on high shelves in his study.

  By the time the bell rang for the first period, Effie and her friends had grown completely silent. Effie was still thinking about her mother, Lexy was fast asleep, Raven was listening to the mice, Maximilian was wondering about where he would find a pianist, and Wolf was dreaming of a perfect battle set-up that was sort of based on a wide-wide attack drill from rugby. If it came to it, he would find a way of protecting Effie on Friday. The bell made them all jump and scramble out from under the blanket clutching their rough-work books ready to hand in to the staff room on the way to double history.

  15

  Terrence Deer-Hart was having a flipping good day. He didn’t usually find himself enjoying his role of bestselling author; certainly not as much as some might have imagined he would. The life of a bestselling author is actually much flipping harder than most people think. For one thing, you have to write a lot of books. You have to sit there and come up with story after story after story. For some people – natural storytellers and bards in particular – those weirdos – this would be a dream come true, of course, but not for Terrence.

  He simply loathed the sight of the empty page that greeted him every morning. He hated the cold shaft of his expensive fountain pen. He rather felt that, having written so flipping many of them, he now even detested words. Well, except for the ones you weren’t allowed to say. He despised the children who read his books only a little less than he despised the children – usually the unpopular goody-goodies – who did not read them, usually because they were ‘not allowed’.

  But things had recently taken a strange turn, and so Terrence was feeling something unfamiliar. What was it called? Oh yes. Love. And hope. And excitement. So many flipping feelings all at once! And all because of that beautiful, delightful, gorgeous, talented – and, let’s face it, also impressively merciless and evil – woman: Skylurian Midzhar. Terrence’s one true love and heart’s desire.

  The thing any author hates more than anything in the world is, as everyone knows, other authors. So imagine Terrence’s delight and surprise when his publisher had asked for his help to kidnap his main rival! Flipping Laurel Wilde!

  She loved him the most. That’s what Skylurian had said. She loved his books the best! His books were flipping marvellous. What’s more, Skylurian had explained to him that she had been systematically destroying Laurel Wilde’s books! What sweet words these were for any author to hear. The pulping of the work of your main rival. It was almost enough to make one glad to be alive.

  They had gone for a late lunch in a dark and cosy little pub that Skylurian knew, right on the edge of the moor. Poor old Laurel Wilde was tied up in the boot of the car. That would flipping well serve her right for outselling Terrence for all these years!

  Terrence and Skylurian ate prawn cocktails by the fireside, gazing into one another’s eyes. And that was when she’d told him her whole plan. Flipping heck! He had been, as they say, gobsmacked. It had been a little hard to take in at first, especially while trying not to get Marie Rose sauce down his jumper. But, if he’d heard her correctly, Skylurian – his one true love – wanted him to use his next author visit to infiltrate the world of the children. Like the Pied Piper, she’d said, but better.

  ‘We are heading for a place called Dragon’s Green, my sweet,’ Skylurian had purred, while picking bits of iceberg lettuce out of Terrence’s hair. ‘You have to follow the child called Euphemia Truelove. She goes by the name Effie. Do whatever it takes to get the information from her. She is the only one who knows how to get there. Perhaps she has a device to help her? You must discover what it is. We are planning a big invasion, my pickled gherkin. How would you like to be the queen’s consort in a brave new universe? How would you care to be the plus-one of doom?’

  She had giggled then, and it was a cold, harsh noise, like a stalactite falling in a remote cave and shattering into a million icy pieces.

  Terrence had never been called a pickled gherkin before. No one had ever offered him the chance to be the plus-one of doom. What could he say? He had longed to join the Diberi for years, and now here was one of their leaders promising him – quite literally – the world. All he had t
o do was find out how to get to Dragon’s Green. How hard could that be? And then, Skylurian had promised him, he would never have to write another flipping children’s book ever again. He would instead, she assured him, be writing the most important book in the entire universe.

  Which is not too much for an author to expect, surely?

  ‘I do believe,’ said Mrs Beathag Hide, sourly, ‘that not only are you all here, you are all here ON TIME.’

  The children watched her in silence as a half-smile played over her lips and then vanished.

  ‘Perhaps we should have an AUTHOR VISIT every day?’ she suggested, sarcastically. ‘Though I really wonder what one could ever learn from such a creature.’ She sighed. ‘Now if it were TOLSTOY or SHAKESPEARE or SOPHOCLES it would be different. Remember, children, that the only good authors in this world are long dead.’ She stood up. ‘Right. Brace yourselves, then, class. I am about to go and fetch him from the staff room. If even ONE of you moves the tiniest bit while I am away, the author visit will be CANCELLED and whoever causes this disappointment will no doubt be DESPISED for the rest of his or her school days.’

  She left the room. The children looked at one another but did not move. They were too frightened. And excited. And nervous. What on earth would a real author look like? They’d barely had a chance to conjure up pictures of tall men in monocles and sleek women who own their own leopards and live in a zoo, when the door opened and . . .

  There he was.

  He was, well, not as tall as they may have hoped. He seemed to have fallen victim to the craze for turquoise shirts that was currently sweeping the city. His hair was a little too long and his trousers a little too short. Those in the front row noticed that he smelled strongly of aftershave, cigarettes and cocktail onions. Even some of the children in the second row noticed it.

  Mrs Beathag Hide sat down behind her desk. Terrence Deer-Hart remained standing. He didn’t look particularly comfortable.

  ‘WELL,’ said Mrs Beathag Hide, ‘I expect you are here to persuade us to buy your books. That, surely, is the purpose of an author visit?’

  ‘Um,’ said Terrence Deer-Hart. ‘Well, yes, it is always nice if one manages to shift some, uh, units, but that is not in fact the purpose of this morning’s visit.’

  ‘To WHAT, then, do we owe the pleasure?’

  ‘I am looking for a collaborator,’ said Terrence. ‘A child collaborator.’

  ‘And you have passed the necessary BACKGROUND tests?’

  ‘What on earth do you mean? Oh, yes, of course. Of course.’

  ‘We do like to keep the children safe, Mr Dark Heart.’

  ‘Deer-Hart.’

  ‘As you wish. Well?’

  ‘Well what?’

  The children were not sure who to admire more, Mrs Beathag Hide, for speaking that way to a world-renowned author, or the author himself for not being at all frightened of her.

  Mrs Beathag Hide glanced at her watch.

  ‘Well, on with the visit!’

  ‘Good morning, children,’ said Terrence.

  ‘Good morning, Mr Deer-Hart,’ they chorused back. Terrence looked quite surprised by this, as if he hadn’t known that the first thing all children learn when they go to school is to start chanting at anyone who wishes them a good morning. But then Terrence’s previous author visits had been to sad little schools like Mrs Joyful’s where the children were so pathetically grateful when anything nice happened to them that they could barely speak.

  ‘I have been reading your work,’ said Terrence. He paused to see if they would chant his own words back at him again. They did not. ‘It is very good. Very good indeed. But before we declare the winner, perhaps some of you have questions about what it’s like to be an author?’

  All at once the questions began.

  ‘Have you ever seen an alligator?’

  ‘Have you ever been rescued from a fire?’

  ‘Can you drive?’

  ‘Have you ever met a spy?’

  And so on.

  ‘Do none of you have questions about any of my books?’ he asked.

  ‘If you’d wanted them to ask questions about your books, you should have told them,’ said Mrs Beathag Hide. ‘They are a very obedient class, and so did as you wished and asked about being an author. In any case, I expect most of them will not have been allowed to read your books. Which one do you particularly recommend?’

  ‘Children of Winter got rather good reviews.’

  ‘And what is it about?’

  ‘Well, there’s been a nuclear war and—’

  ‘How GHASTLY,’ said Mrs Beathag Hide. ‘Have you written any good tragedies?’

  ‘You could try The Last Child,’ said Terrence. ‘It’s extremely sad. It’s about a boy whose parents die in a horrible accident and—’

  ‘NO!’ said Mrs Beathag Hide. ‘That is not real tragedy. Tragedy is UPLIFTING.’

  ‘Um, well, then how about Scarecrow? It’s about a boy who is bullied and then . . .’ Terrence and the class waited for Mrs Beathag Hide to declare this ‘ghastly’ as well. She did not. Well, not out loud. Instead she made the kind of face you might make if someone had just dropped a stink bomb at your feet.

  Terrence talked for a while about Scarecrow, in which the unfortunate boy dresses up as a scarecrow and hides in a field so as to escape being beaten up by the bullies. He ends up befriending the scarecrows, who teach him the value of true friendship. Objectively, it was the most original and moving of all Terrence’s books, although it had sold the least amount of copies.

  ‘It sounds exceedingly sentimental and trite,’ said Mrs Beathag Hide. ‘Still, if you genuinely recommend it as your most uplifting book, we shall all rush out and buy it immediately, won’t we, class?’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Hide,’ chanted the class.

  ‘And now,’ said Mrs Beathag Hide. ‘ON with the visit. You have some feedback for the children on their CREATIVE WRITING, I believe?’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Terrence. ‘I was very impressed with the standard.’

  The class began to glow, rather as Lexy had done the night before. The glow was slightly warming, which was a good thing, given that the heating was still not working. Surely if Terrence Deer-Hart approved of their creative writing they’d be allowed to do more of it?

  ‘Such imagination!’ Terrence went on. ‘But now it is time for the announcement of the name of the child I am choosing to be my unique collaborator. The child who submitted the best entry for this competition is . . .’

  The class took a deep breath.

  ‘Euphemia Truelove!’

  Everyone clapped. Effie was astonished. Her entry had, she knew, been extremely poor. For one thing, she’d written it on the bus from Raven’s village that morning. It had been scrawled in her very worst handwriting. She knew she’d made a number of spelling errors, but her dictionary had been at home and so she hadn’t checked any of the words. It had also been – quite deliberately, in fact – stupid and unbelievable.

  Travelling to other worlds was, of course, something Effie knew a great deal about. But, having learned her lesson in the Edgelands Market the previous day, she had deliberately concealed her knowledge. No one was ever going to find out what Effie knew about travelling to the Otherworld – not apart from her very most trusted friends. So how she had won this competition was a complete mystery.

  ‘Euphemia has written a most charming story,’ Terrence was saying, ‘about a little goat who goes off in a spaceship but leaves his breakfast behind. Such a wonderful command of the language! Such delightful metaphors and similes. And what a great number of glorious adverbs and adjectives!’

  ‘I do not APPROVE of adverbs and adjectives in stories,’ said Mrs Beathag Hide. ‘They are lazy and banal. I do hope the rest of the class won’t get any ideas from this. What exactly does the child win?’ she asked Terrence.

  ‘The chance to have her life written about,’ he replied. ‘I am going to shadow her for the next two days and learn all about
her. Then I am going to craft my knowledge into a story that will be the basis for my next novel. And Euphemia will get a percentage of the profits. Yes, indeed, a whole 0.00001 percent! And who knows, she might even be cast to play herself in the film version.’

  Everyone in the class felt extremely jealous. Although 0.00001 percent sounded quite small, everyone knew that novelists made so much money that this could easily end up being millions, billions or even trillions of pounds. And Effie would probably get her name in the book somewhere too. But playing herself in the film version of her life? That was too much. And all because she’d written a stupid story about a goat in a spaceship? Suddenly life seemed quite unfair.

  The only people who were neither jealous nor disappointed were Effie’s friends. As the weak sound of the bell came tinkling from the corridor, and everyone stood up to go to lunch, they all exchanged glances. How on earth were they going to investigate Skylurian Midzhar’s activities with one of her authors following their every move? And how were they going to protect Effie?

  ‘So,’ said Terrence Deer-Hart as they left the classroom. He smiled an empty smile. ‘Where do we have lunch, little flower?’

  ‘The canteen’s this way,’ said Effie.

  As she walked down the old, wooden-panelled corridor with Terrence Deer-Hart beside her she became aware of a presence entering her consciousness. It was Maximilian.

  ‘Hello,’ he said inside her head. ‘Don’t worry. I’m not going to look at any of your memories. Although can I just say that they are a complete shambles? When we have a quiet moment, I think I’m going to have to teach you to order your mind properly. Anyway, I wanted to let you know that we can speak like this and Terrence can’t hear us. Just think your thoughts – ideally try to think the ones you want me to hear towards the front of your mind, and then I won’t have to see – oh yuck – things like that!’

  ‘Like what?’ said Effie inside her mind.

  ‘Spotted dick and custard! Why on earth are you thinking about spotted dick and custard?’