by Garth Nix
When the end of school came, Jaide and Jack were the first out of the door, scooping up their bags and hurrying on up the path. Tara called ‘Bye!’ after them, and Jaide waved as they fled. Jack was too busy watching the trees across the road as he always did, looking for any sign of The Evil. That was where it had first attacked them, dragging him into the sewers underground on a tide of ants and rats. Just thinking about it still made him feel nervous and unsettled.
They raced each other to Parkhill Street, where they turned right. Watchward Lane lay between a hardware store and a second-hand bookshop called The Book Herd, which had a front window full of adventure novels from the 1950s and incomplete encyclopedias from some even more distant era. The twins kept an eye out for Kleo the cat, who at least notionally lived there, but she wasn’t visible. The only living creature around was Rodeo Dave, the bookshop’s mustachioed owner, who waved from the open doorway as they ran by.
Up the cobbled lane they went, under a whitewashed arch topped with weather-worn gargoyles, then along a curving gravel drive. Their grandmother’s house appeared from behind a long line of poplars that cast creepy shadows across a scraggly lawn. The faded bricks and shingled roof that had once seemed strange and threatening to them were now a welcome sight. The house provided a secure base of operations for their grandmother’s secret work in Portland. From the widow’s walk, they could see across most of the small town, and the weathervane next to it had proven a handy indicator of The Evil’s presence on more than one occasion.
Jack reached the front door first, as he always did in the race home from school, unless Jaide tripped him along the way. The door was unlocked. They burst inside with a loud clatter of shoes on polished floorboards, threw their bags into the den and hurried up the hallway.
‘Grandma! Grandma!’ they both called out.
‘She’s not here,’ came the voice of their mother from the kitchen.
Immediately the twins knew that they had to contain their excitement. If their mother noticed, there would be too many questions that they couldn’t answer, with consequent difficulties. Grandma X had ‘helped’ Susan forget the worst parts of the twins’ recent adventures, and they didn’t want to do anything that might make those memories return.
‘Do you know where she went?’ Jaide carefully ventured.
‘She didn’t say.’ Susan Shield emerged, wiping floury hands on an apron. ‘How was your day?’
Both twins skidded to a halt in the middle of the hallway, staring at her as though they had seen a ghost.
Jaide said, ‘Mum, what are you doing?’
‘Cooking of course.’
‘But,’ said Jack, ‘you never cook.’
‘That’s not true. I do occasionally.’
She turned and went back into the kitchen, with the twins cautiously following, as if something horrible might be lying in wait. ‘With my shifts giving me four days off in a row, I have to find something to do with my spare time. I thought you’d be excited.’
‘That depends,’ said Jaide.’ What are you trying – I mean, what are you making?’
When Hector Shield was home, Susan wasn’t allowed anywhere near the stove. Her disasters were legendary, including scones that could be used as paperweights years later, steak as tough as plastic and baked potatoes on which she’d sprinkled sugar instead of salt (Jack had quite liked those).
‘I’m making a cobbler,’ she said proudly. ‘I found it in one of your grandmother’s recipe books. Mamma Jane used to make it for me when I was a kid. You’ll love it.’
‘I thought a cobbler made shoes,’ said Jaide, thinking about things Susan had made in the past that tasted like old shoes.
‘It’s also an old word for a kind of cake,’ replied Susan.
Jack looked around the kitchen and tried to be enthusiastic. The room was a mess. Every cupboard was open, and every drawer too. A giant pot sat on the stovetop, splattered with dark green gloop. The table was covered in dishes and exotic instruments designed to beat, whip and blend even the most reluctant ingredients into line. Jack didn’t recognise any of them, and he hugged his bag close to his chest to ensure none of the mess got on it.
Some of Susan’s cheer faded. ‘Unfortunately your grandmother doesn’t have any modern appliances – nothing that works on electricity anyway – so I’ve been using trial and error. I think I’ve got it worked out now . . . and the oven appears to be behaving itself at last . . .’
Jaide peeked over at a baking dish broad and deep enough to wash a dog in and saw a glutinous mass that she thought might – or might not – be a cobbler in waiting.
‘Do we have to eat it?’ she asked.
‘Don’t be like that,’ said Susan, her face falling even further. ‘I’m making it for you as a treat.’
‘But we didn’t ask you to.’
‘I know you didn’t, but that doesn’t mean you won’t like it.’ Susan put her hands on her hips. ‘I mean, I know we’re here for a reason, and your grandmother is a very good cook, and you need her to . . .’
Her voice faltered, and her eyes lost focus for a second, as though she had momentarily captured a memory, only to lose it again.
‘That is . . . I mean, I ought to be able to look after you too . . . shouldn’t I?’
‘Yes, Mum,’ said Jack, braving the mess to give her a hug. It had been little more than a week since their old home exploded, but already it felt as though they were living separate lives. Every aspect of their troubletwister training, from their Gifts to the house’s special properties, had to be kept hidden from their mother. It was a kindness really, since she couldn’t cope with the truth.
Jaide joined him, letting her mother squeeze her around the shoulder. ‘Can we go and play now?’
‘No, I want you to do your homework.’
‘But we don’t have any homework,’ said Jack triumphantly.
‘I know Mr Carver never assigns any,’ said Susan, ‘but that doesn’t mean you can’t do some anyway. Look in your room. I’ve downloaded and printed out some maths problems. Do them now and there’ll be cobbler when you’ve finished.’
‘But Mum –’
‘No buts, Jaide. It’s either that or help me clean up in here. Not that this was all my mess. The kitchen was in a terrible state before I even started. Your grandmother has been steaming up some rather odd greens in that big pot. Now, I’ve finished with the mixing bowl, so you can wash that up for starters –’
‘Homework’s fine, Mum!’ chorused the twins, as they beat a hasty retreat.
On their beds were two pages each of closely spaced exercises. Jaide barely glanced at them. She threw herself on to her bed. If there was one thing she hated more than her mother’s so-called cooking, it was maths.
‘This isn’t fair,’ she said.
‘It’s not so bad,’ said Jack. He was good with numbers and had already completed the first three problems in his head, just by reading through the questions. ‘The sooner we start, the sooner it’ll be finished.’
That was one of their father’s pet sayings. Jaide didn’t appear to be listening.
‘I mean, there are so many better things we could be doing,’ she muttered, kicking one trainered foot against a pole of her four-poster bed, making the knob on top rattle in a very satisfactory way. ‘If Grandma was here, I bet we wouldn’t have to do this.’
‘She’d only make us work on the Compendium,’ said Jack. The Compendium was the repository of knowledge every Warden needed to possess to help them fight The Evil. Over the past week, Jack and Jaide had spent hours writing up their own experiences for the benefit of others and reading about previous encounters until their eyes crossed with exhaustion.
‘Yes, but at least that’s interesting. That’s what we’re here for, isn’t it? Not to do adding and subtracting. We won’t need any of this stuff when we’re Wardens.’
Jack put his pencil down and thought about that.
‘We might, you know,’ he said. ‘I mean, being a
Warden is a secret job, so we’ll have to have ordinary jobs as well. Dad has his antique-finding business. I know it ties in with being a Warden, but he must need it for money, and to look normal, I suppose.’
‘Normal?’ Jaide scoffed. ‘Since when does Dad look normal?’
‘OK,’ Jack replied, picking up his pencil again. ‘I’m just saying that even when we’re Wardens we’ll still need ordinary jobs and everything.’
‘Maybe,’ Jaide agreed grudgingly. She thought about being a Warden and wondered what her cover identity might be. ‘It depends where we have to go to fight The Evil. If we get to go somewhere interesting, like Africa, I could be an archaeologist. Or if it’s to a tropical island, I could be a marine biologist.’
There were a number of special places all around the world, like Portland, where The Evil found it easier to get through and take over living things. The Wardens blocked these entry points by establishing magical wards. But the twins didn’t know where these places were. They didn’t even know where three of the four wards were in Portland, or what they were.
The only thing Grandma X had told them about the wards so far was a simple rhyme:
SOMETHING GROWING
SOMETHING READ
SOMETHING LIVING
SOMEONE DEAD
There was a ward for each of the four points of the compass, but the twins only knew about Portland’s East Ward because they’d had to fix it. Formerly a charm magicked into a bronze plate in the lighthouse, the ‘something read’ ward was now a piece of romantic graffiti written by their parents before getting married, invested with magical powers from the twins’ Gifts.
The twins had tried to work out what the other wards might be, but Grandma X wouldn’t tell them, and discouraged them from guessing. She just said, ‘You know your Gifts can disturb the wards, my dear troubletwisters. So until you have control of those Gifts, it is best that you do not involve yourselves with the wards. There is a time for everything, you know, and now is not that time.’
After the restoration of the East Ward, The Evil could no longer come through from its own dimension or world or wherever it properly belonged, and everything had gone back to normal.
Or so Grandma X told them. But if there really was a monster in Portland, it must have come from somewhere.
‘Never mind The Evil,’ muttered Jaide, finally reaching for the pages to start her homework. ‘We need protection from our own mother . . .’
They worked in silence until the last maths problem was completed and checked. Jack finished first, but he didn’t go on about it to Jaide. She was already cross. When they were done, they put the completed pages on their mother’s bed, then paused for a moment at the top of the stairs, taking stock.
From below came a faint burning smell, the sound of clattering dishes and the occasional puzzled exclamation.
‘She sounds busy,’ whispered Jaide. ‘Let’s not disturb her.’
Jack didn’t argue. Together they tiptoed down the stairs and out of the front door, then circled around the north side of the house, well out of sight of the kitchen window, until they reached the back garden. The rain of the previous night had cleared, leaving the ground only slightly damp. They climbed the tangled roots of the Douglas fir and debated what was to be done about their missing grandmother. They had been home from school for a full hour and still she hadn’t appeared.
‘Her car’s gone,’ noted Jack, peering into the shady corner of the garden where the yellow Hillman Minx usually sat.
‘And so are the cats,’ said Jaide. She stood on her tiptoes to peer over the fence bordering the garden, in case the cats were hunting next door. Aristotle and Kleopatra were their grandmother’s Warden Companions, and they were often prowling about. ‘Kleo’s always here to keep an eye on us when Grandma’s out, like she doesn’t trust us . . .’
Over the south fence they could see the old fire-blackened house that had been empty ever since the twins had arrived in Portland. This was the house Tara’s father planned to develop. It was a twin to Grandma X’s ancient home, but built on a much narrower plot, which made it seem smaller somehow, crowded in on all sides. They had been warned to stay well away from it because it wasn’t safe.
‘Kleo?’ called Jack, just in case the cats were close but out of sight. ‘Ari?’
There were no answering meows, just the soft sighing of wind through pine needles.
‘Now what?’ asked Jaide, slumping down on to a particularly large root. ‘Should we go looking for the monster ourselves?’
‘We don’t even know if there really is a monster,’ replied Jack. ‘Besides, we have to stay here to suffer from Mum’s cake.’
‘We could look it up in the Compendium –’ Jaide started to say, before Jack interrupted her.
‘No we can’t,’ said Jack. ‘Grandma told us not to go into the Blue Room when she’s not around. We’ll just have to wait.’
The Blue Room was the house’s hidden lower level, entered by a second front door only Wardens and troubletwisters could see, or via a magical corridor that led from the second floor to the basement in a single step.
‘But there’s nothing to do,’ Jaide complained. ‘I wish we still had our trampoline.’
Their trampoline had been blown up along with their old house and all their other toys, and it was one thing Jaide particularly missed. She liked nothing better than being airborne.
‘Yeah, well, if you hadn’t kicked the football into the tree yesterday –’
‘It wasn’t my fault the branch got in the way!’
‘But if you hadn’t been cheating, it would never have gone that high in the first place.’
‘Cheating how?’
‘By using your Gift.’
‘I would never do that.’ Jaide jumped to her feet, inspired rather than offended by the accusation. ‘But that’s how we’ll get it down again. Come on!’
CHAPTER THREE
A Nosy Neighbour
Jaide dragged her brother out of the shadow of the tree and shaded her eyes to peer into the upper branches. They had found the football in a cupboard the previous day. It was old and slightly flat, but they had pumped it up with a bicycle pump discovered on a previous expedition, and had kicked the ball around for an hour before it went up into the tree. Now it seemed impossibly high, a tiny black and white speck caught firmly in the crook of two branches.
She really hadn’t been using her Gift to give the ball even the slightest extra boost. It had just seemed to shoot off her shoe like a rocket. Perhaps she had hidden football talents too, she thought.
‘Are you sure we should do this?’ asked Jack. ‘Grandma –’
‘Grandma keeps telling us we’ll never get our Gifts under control unless we practise them.’
‘Yeah, but inside, where no one can see.’
‘We’re pretty well hidden here,’ Jaide pointed out.
‘I suppose –’
‘Good!’ exclaimed Jaide, without waiting to see what Jack was actually going to say. He sighed, shrugged his shoulders and gestured for his sister to do whatever it was she wanted to do.
Jaide took a deep breath and lifted her hands up, palms out to face the ball. The sun, one source of power for her particular Gift, shone brightly upon her, making her feel warm and full of energy. A faint breeze – which also reinforced her Gift – tickled her arms and face and set her red hair dancing. This was the fun part – starting, feeling the Gift stirring in her, slowly letting it build up before she unleashed it, hopefully under control.
In front of her, a miniature whirlwind spun up out of thin air, hurtling round and round like an elongated top.
‘Go on,’ she told it. ‘Get the ball, and don’t do anything else.’
The tiny twister stretched upwards and then, moving erratically at first but then more steadily, began to ascend towards the tree’s upper branches.
Jack watched her from the edge of the tree’s shade, feeling slightly envious. Jaide could do things with her G
ift, practical things that had an immediate effect on the world. All he could manage when the sun was up was skulking about in shadows. His Gift was fed by darkness and the deeps of the earth.
Feeling left out, he stepped back into the shade of the tree and concentrated on being invisible. The afternoon sun was still bright, and the dense foliage above him cast a thick net of shadows. Diving into them was like pulling a veil down over the world because when he became one with the darkness, ordinary light seemed to slip over him too, like water off a duck’s back. Daytime became dull and thin, and the night as deep as a magical well.
The shadows gathered where the branches of the tree met the trunk. He reached into them, slipping from point to point with the ease of breath. He was a Shadow Walker, someone who could go wherever shadows led, popping in and out of existence – and in this case, that could be right up into the top of a tree.
It suddenly occurred to Jack that he could race Jaide to the ball and, if he was careful, bring it down himself.
Shadow-Jack darted silently up the trunk like a dark, human-shaped lizard, grinning at the thought of how he would surprise his sister.
Meanwhile the tiny twister danced higher, twitching and tying itself in knots. Jaide kept her eyes carefully on it, and used her upraised hands to bat it in the right direction as if she was wielding a motion-guided remote control. Grandma X once had her nudge individual dust motes back and forth in shafts of golden sunlight, but this was much more fun – and considerably more challenging. She could feel her Gift uncoiling in her like a tiger roused from sleep, and she whispered calming thoughts to it.
‘Easy, easy . . . not too fast . . . that’s it . . . no, gently – gently . . .’
The tiny twister came level with the ball, and trembled there for an instant, as though deciding whether to collapse or go sweeping off into the sky. Jaide gritted her teeth, willing it to behave. All it had to do was nudge the ball firmly enough to knock it out of its perch. She could do it with the tip of a finger. Why should using her Gift be different?
