"That's insane!" Ralph rasped. "You heard what Jackson said! It sounded like if we try to go too far we'll stretch ourselves away to nothing!"
"Fiddlesticks," Zane said dismissively, mimicking Franklyn. "If he really thought it was dangerous he wouldn't have made all those rings. Besides, I'm not suggesting we go all that far away. Just a teensy way. A hop, skip and a jump, really."
"You're daft," James said, but he was grinning. He couldn't help it.
"You'll want to go," Zane insisted. "Trust me."
"It's suicidally reckless," Scorpius said matter-of-factly.
Zane straightened and looked at each face in turn. "It's New Amsterdam."
Rose nodded seriously. "How soon can we go?" Zane clapped her on the shoulder. "Let me get my blazer."
4. THE COLLECTOR
Less than a minute later, Zane led the group back through the dark antechamber, with its single table and collection of rings, and up a short wooden staircase to a second narrow door.
This he opened carefully. As he did so, a creak emanated from the outer laboratory. Zane froze and glanced back nervously.
"What?" James asked. "Is Franklyn coming back?"
"Shh!" Zane hissed, and then added in a lower voice, "It's not Franklyn I'm worried about. It's Jackson. If he catches us messing around with his rings, being stretched to oblivion will be the least of our worries.
A shadow moved in the outer room, and then a figure appeared in the doorway.
"Am I late?" a girl's voice asked in an excited whisper. "Oh good. I'm not late."
Zane exhaled in relief. "You all know Nastasia. I told her we might be going on a little field trip."
James frowned as Nastasia crowded next to him, her hair now transformed to a glossy pink. "You think it's a good idea to take this many people?"
"We'll be fine," Zane answered easily, stepping up into the tiny office. "Jackson made six copies of every set of rings. There are six of us. It's perfect."
"Besides," Nastasia smiled, sidling up next to James at the base of the steps. "If you leave me behind, I will totally rat you all out."
"Nice," Scorpius nodded, not unappreciatively.
Rose trotted up the steps and glanced back from the office doorway. "Come on, you lot," she grinned. "In for a Drummel, in for a Jack!"
Careful not to touch anything, James crowded into the dark office with the others. The room was extremely small, crammed with a desk, a very full bookshelf, and a tall wooden cabinet lined with narrow drawers. Zane counted down from the top, then slid open the eighth drawer. A collection of folded purple cloths lay neatly inside, each labelled with a pinned note. James leaned close, reading the labels.
"These are insane," Ralph muttered, impressed. "They cover the whole magical world! Here's the pyramids of Egypt! And Loch Ness! And what's this one? 'The Ring of the Bearded Ancients'?"
"Ooo!" Rose said in awe, shoving Ralph aside with some effort. "That's the Pakistani wizarding university! Very secret and ancient! They say it's hidden up in the Karakoram Mountains, surrounded by impossible peaks! Let's go there instead!"
"Don't be daft," James insisted. "It's too far. I don't fancy getting pulled into a thread and snapped in two. You were all excited about New Amsterdam a minute ago."
"That was before I knew all the options," Rose pouted.
"Make with the rings, Zane, you Zombie goombah!" Nastasia urged eagerly. "James here is itching to go!"
James glanced aside at her in annoyance. If anything, he was having serious second thoughts about the entire venture. Nastasia, however, seemed to enjoy antagonizing him. She glanced at him, shoulder to shoulder, and winked mischievously.
"Here we are," Zane announced, lifting one of the cloth bundles out of the drawer. "'The Crystal Mountain, government level'. That's the topmost floors of the huge glass skyscraper we saw last year, remember? Oh, this is going to be totally excellent." Very gingerly, he laid the cloth on the desk and unwrapped it, careful to map exactly how it had been folded. A moment later, twelve rings gleamed against the darkness.
"A pair each," Scorpius said in a business-like manner, reaching for a set of rings. "Just like before."
"This is it, everyone," Zane warned. "Gold for outgoing, green for coming back. Keep your rings stashed safe in a pocket whenever you aren't using them. If everything goes as planned, we'll be back before the next bell and nobody will suspect a thing."
Ralph moaned, "Since when does everything go as planned?"
"We should all be in agreement," Rose announced, setting her face sternly and glancing around. "If anyone wants to stay back, we all stay back. Agreed?"
"Hmmm…" Nastasia cocked her head thoughtfully. She glanced aside at James and narrowed her eyes. "Mmmm… No." With that, she jammed the golden ring onto her finger and vanished in a blur of speed.
"I must admit," Scorpius announced abruptly, "I do sort of like her." He twisted his own ring onto his finger and vanished as well.
"Eeee!" Rose cried, bouncing on her toes with equal parts excitement and fear. She donned her own ring, vanishing along with Zane, who left a thrilled whoop echoing behind him.
James gave a perplexed shrug. "What say, Ralph? On three?"
Ralph nodded stiffly. Together they counted off, rings poised before their fingers. On three, they jammed the rings on.
This time, the sensation of stretching was much greater. For a split second, James felt that his body was a mere ribbon, many miles long, funnelling through a conduit of light and colour. Then, more violently than before, reality snapped up around him, nearly smacking him in the face. He stumbled and fell heavily, sprawling onto some plush, flat surface.
"Oooh," he moaned, trying to push himself upright. He opened his eyes and found himself staring down through a diminishing blur of glassy layers, vanishing into bright, dizzying depths. "Oh!" he exclaimed again, scrambling to his knees in alarm.
"Yeeks!" Ralph agreed from nearby. James glanced up and saw his friend huddled a few feet away, leaning against a gleaming, transparent desk. They appeared to be in a sort of enormous office complex, filled with desks, low walls, collections of plush chairs and long tables. It was not unlike some areas of the Ministry of Magic, except for the fact that everything, right down to the plush carpeting and high panelled ceiling, seemed to be made out of perfectly transparent materials. Every surface glimmered with captured prisms, dancing in the sunlight that filtered, uninterrupted, throughout the entire building. Spreading below, and visible from every angle, was the stacked twin cities of New Amsterdam and Manhattan, looking serene and eerily empty in the distance.
"The Crystal Mountain," James said, smiling in amazement.
"Freaky," Ralph commented, getting gingerly to his feet. "Nothing like living with constant, crushing vertigo. Where's everybody else, by the way?"
As if in answer, a voice boomed through the air, echoing broadly. "All late arrivals should make their way to the elevators," it announced sternly, interrupted by a distant, girlish giggle. The voice went on, somewhat off-microphone, "Shut up, Nastasia! You're ruining the effect!"
James and Ralph glanced at each other. "Zane," they said in unison.
The public address system shut off with a loud click.
"Over there," James grinned, pointing toward a bank of glassy lift doors refracted through the crystal desks and a collection of tasteful, nearly invisible potted ferns. Together they began to make their way through the complex, barely avoiding barking their shins on the corners of transparent desks and chairs.
Despite the beauty of the place, a thin layer of dust fogged the crystal surfaces, reminding them of its months of abandoned emptiness. Glassy mugs still sat on desks, half full of congealed coffee and tea. At the head of a long conference table, a Magical Marker scribbled notes on a floating crystal screen, repeating the same charts over and over, squeaking drily in the silence.
James shivered despite the sunny warmth of the place.
Ralph reached the lifts first and tapped the
up button. Distant machinery began to hum. Glancing down, James could see a tiny glimmering box between his feet. Swiftly, it began to climb, resolving into the unmistakable shape of a lift compartment. It swept smoothly into place behind the closed glass doors and shuddered to a stop. The doors shuttled open and both boys stepped inside, their feet making no noise on the strangely invisible plush carpeting.
James peered at the glowing buttons next to the door. The top button was larger than the rest, labelled ROOF MEZZANINE. With a shrug, James tapped it.
Immediately the lift began to rise. Beyond the doors, floors began to shuttle downward, revealing more levels of offices and meeting rooms. In a matter of seconds, the last floor swept below them and the lift came to a halt. James could see Zane, Rose, Scorpius and Nastasia gathered outside, but the rest of the exterior space was a glare of sunlight on crystal.
As the doors swept open, a gust of hot wind barged into the lift, ruffling James' hair and tee shirt.
"Looks like there's a bit of a scattering effect over distances," Zane called over the wind. "Good thing none of us materialized between floors."
Nastasia nodded. "Or inside an elevator shaft."
Ralph blinked and shuddered. "I hate knowing that the only thing between us and falling two hundred floors was dumb luck."
"I wouldn't be too worried, Deedle," Scorpius said encouragingly. "Dumb luck seems to have a thing for you lot."
James and Ralph joined the others as they strode toward a low railing. Sets of stairs led down from either side to the main roof, which was divided into a series of low, square platforms.
"Landing pads," Zane said, pointing. "For people who commute by broom. Look, there're still a few brooms parked over there on the rack."
James squinted against the sunlight. Sure enough, a series of neat racks stood along the roofline, still decked with a scattering of sleek, black brooms. Each broom seemed to have an unusual shape perched on its handle. James thought they looked like miniature gargoyles.
"Come on!" Zane called, trotting down the stairs to the main roof. "Let's take a look over the side!"
Rose and Nastasia followed eagerly, looking around with open curiosity. Feeling strangely reluctant, James descended the stairs as well.
"Blimey," Ralph said in a low voice as he reached the ledge of the roofline. "That's a lot of height."
James peered over carefully. The four lane avenue appeared to be miles below, separated from them by a haze of distance. Wind tore over the roof, rattling the brooms in the rack and whipping through the students' hair.
"It's excellent," Nastasia proclaimed, leaning over the ledge and tilting her head up toward the sky, her eyes closed and her pink hair fluttering.
"Brr!" Rose said, hugging herself. "It gives me the shivers!" She stepped back behind Zane and clutched her cardigan tightly about her shoulders.
"My father says Victor Krum and the Harriers are down there somewhere," Scorpius muttered, frowning into the distance. "The official story is that they're helping find stragglers, but my father thinks there are other reasons. He thinks they're here to keep an eye on headmaster Merlin's staff."
"His staff?" Rose blinked. "You mean it's still down there?"
Scorpius nodded, still peering down into the city below. "He jammed it into the street when he cast the spell that froze the Muggles for a day. It was the spell that used up all his power, killing him. But his staff has been stuck there ever since. Nobody can get it out, and it's too powerful just to leave unguarded."
"Like the sword in the stone," Ralph sighed, and then shuddered.
James glanced at his friend and saw the frown on his face. Last time they had been here, Ralph had been carrying the dead body of poor Lucy, killed in the World Between the Worlds. A deep sense of melancholy descended on him at the thought.
"Come on," he said flatly. "Let's get out of here."
To his surprise, there were nods all around. Slowly and silently, the troop began to make their way back to the mezzanine.
As they reached the top of the steps, a particularly hard gust of wind howled over the rooftop, flapping James' tee shirt against his chest and streaming wildly through Rose's long hair. The cardigan she had clutched around her shoulders caught the wind like a sail and tore up into the air.
"No!" she cried, grasping at it, but it was already gone. The cardigan lofted gently into the sky, borne on the currents of the wind, and then dropped, fluttering silently past the roofline and down, down, out of sight.
"No!" Rose cried again, "Bloody hell! No!"
"Bummer," Zane announced with feeling. "That was a nice sweater, too."
Rose spun on the spot and boggled at him, her eyes wild, her hair still streaming in the wind. "It isn't the sweater, you great idiot!" She screamed, and then clutched her face in her hands, turning back toward the empty space beyond the roof. "Oh, how could I have been so bloody stupid?"
"What is it, Rose?" James asked, approaching her. "What's the problem?"
"The ring!" she said, facing him and holding up her left hand, showing him the golden ring on her finger. "The green ring for the return trip! It was in my cardigan pocket, James! It's gone now, blown right over the roof, and I'm stuck here!"
There was a long moment of silence as everyone stared at Rose, dumbfounded and horror-struck.
Nastasia stepped back toward the top of the stairs and peered over the railing, into the distant haze of the cities below.
"Whoopsie!" she sang out, glancing back with an ironic smile.
The six students approached the railing over which Rose's cardigan had blown.
Ralph frowned thoughtfully. "Can't the rest of us just return and then send somebody back with two green rings?"
"They don't work that way," Zane shook his head. "They're made in pairs. The green rings only work with their golden counterparts. Separated, they're just jewellery."
James squinted over the ledge, seeking any sign of Rose's lost cardigan. "At least no one else can use her green ring if they find her sweater, right?"
"Right," Zane agreed. "But if we don't find it, Rose is going to have to walk home. And it's a hell of a long way to the Aleron on foot."
"This is all her fault," James said suddenly, turning and glaring at Nastasia. "She took off before we all agreed to come. She'll probably pop straight back without another thought."
A sincerely hurt look crossed Nastasia's face. James was so surprised to see it that he felt rather bad about blaming her. The look, however, was gone almost as soon as it had appeared.
"I didn't make anyone come along," she proclaimed loftily. "I'm the adventurous type. I can't help it."
Ralph turned to Rose with a pained expression. "Why couldn't you just keep your ring in your pocket like everyone else?"
"That cardigan contained the only pockets I have!" she hissed. "You try running around in a skirt and see where you stick things!"
"Yeah!" Zane said with sudden enthusiasm.
"This is all very entertaining," Scorpius interjected, "but the clock is ticking and we aren't any closer to finding Rose's ring. Might I suggest we head down and form a search party?"
James sighed. "Right. There's no point in bickering. I'll stay with Rose to help her find her ring. The rest of you can head back if you want."
"No way," Ralph said immediately. "We stick together. Rose was right. We're all in this together."
"I'm not going anywhere without Rosie," Zane agreed. "This was my idea, after all."
Scorpius nodded curtly, and then turned to Nastasia.
"Oh, what fun would it be if I left now?" she announced in a suddenly sulky voice. James was secretly gratified to see that she was capable of being disgruntled.
"Fine," Scorpius said, turning toward the mezzanine and the elevators beyond. "Down we go."
Zane shook his head. "The elevators are no good. The street level is all locked up inside and out. The magical security perimeter was set up by Professor Jackson himself. There's no way out through t
he building."
"So what are we going to do?" Ralph shrugged helplessly. "Jump?"
"No," James said, turning toward the further roofline and pointing. "We fly!"
Rose approached the few dark broomsticks that remained in the rooftop rack. "But that would be like stealing. Wouldn't it?"
"Nooo," Zane assured her heartily. "No, it's called 'commandeering.' This is an emergency after all. We can return them when we're done."
Rose glanced aside at him suspiciously. "You like the idea of flying those brooms over the ledge, don't you?"
"Don't be silly," Zane replied unconvincingly. "Tough times call for tough measures and all that. It's a dirty job. Damn the torpedoes. Ooo! This one's an Aventidore! Got its own slipstream generator and everything!"
"Zane!" Rose scolded. "This is very serious!"
"Right," Zane agreed, not taking his eyes from the broom. "Very serious. Totally. But still. This one's mine."
James peered closely at the broom, noticing again the impish shape perched on the end. "What's that thing, anyway?"
Zane shrugged. "I don't know. Hood ornament, maybe?" He reached for it, grabbing the sleek black broom from its rack just as Scorpius called out a sudden warning. His words were drowned out by an ear-splitting shriek from the broom itself.
"THIEF!" the broom blared in a shrill falsetto voice. "THIEF! ANUTHORIZED POSSESSION! WHOOP! WHOOP! CALL POLICE! NOTIFY OWNER! CONTACT INSURANCE AGENCY! WHOOP! WHOOP! WHOOP!"
"That's a personal alarm gargoyle!" Scorpius shouted over the wailing broom. He pointed at the impish shape perched on the end, which had cupped its tiny hands to the sides of its wide mouth. "What are you, a total bumpkin?"
"Ah," Zane nodded, trying to sound casual while shouting over the blaring imp. "Nice feature! There's got to be a way to shut it off somehow."
He began to poke and prod at the imp, as if looking for a button. The imp slapped at his hand, then began to giggle angrily.
"Knock it off!" it demanded. "This is serious! I'm being stolen! THIEF! NOTIFY POLICE! WHOOP! WHEEOOO!"
James Potter and the Morrigan Web Page 19
