Midnight Train

by Angie Sage

  “Oh, Poppa, what a lovely thing to do.” Then Alex’s face clouded. “But it didn’t work?”

  “Your momma never had the chance to try it,” Hagos said. “She . . . she died before I could get it to her.”

  “Oh.” Alex could hardly bear to think about how close her mother had been to being saved.

  “So then I was going to use it myself,” Hagos continued, “but I couldn’t find it. Not anywhere. But I know it is still here somewhere. I just know it.” He smiled. “Don’t worry, there is plenty of time to look for it. We will be fine. Now tell me, can you feel the Enchantment in this little box here?”

  Alex was happy to stop thinking sad thoughts. She nodded. “It’s very strong,” she said.

  “I knew you’d feel it. Even as a little one you were so talented.”

  “Was I?”

  Hagos chuckled. “When you were in a bad mood you used to Fade.”

  “I used to do Fades?”

  “Yes. You were very precocious. Your mother, who was a little bit Dark to Enchantment, could just about see you, but I couldn’t. Not at all. It terrified me. That’s why I never let go of your hand when we went out together.” Hagos frowned. “But maybe I had a presentiment too, that I should never let go of you.”

  “Oh, Poppa,” Alex said. “You saved me by letting me go. You know that.”

  “Knowing is not the same as feeling. Feeling it here.” Hagos placed his balled fist over his heart and then, to hide his emotion, he busily opened a drawer in his desk and took out a blue enameled box. He flipped open the lid to reveal a stack of thin tissue paper, which he riffled through, then drew out a wafer-thin piece of paper covered with closely written formulas and symbols. “This is the Hawke’s new and utterly benign Enchantment,” Hagos said. “Would you like to add it to the codex?”

  “I’ll go and get it,” Alex said. “It’s in my bedside cupboard.”

  Hagos smiled. “No need to fetch it. Shall I show you how the codex works long distance?”

  “Long distance?” asked Alex.

  “Indeed.” Hagos gave Alex the little square of tissue paper. “Just put this on your palm and then tell it to ‘go home,’” he said.

  Feeling a little foolish telling a piece of paper to go home, Alex did just that. She watched the delicate paper dissolve into wisps of mist; she felt a sudden rush of heat to her palm, and it was gone.

  Hagos looked thrilled. “That was very well done, and very fast. Now where do you suppose it has gone?”

  “In the codex! I’m going to get it,” Alex said excitedly. She hurried off to her room and a moment later was back with the little blue book.

  “So,” said Hagos. “Now let’s see inside, shall we?”

  Alex laid the codex on the desk and tentatively opened it. The pages naturally fell open at the new Hawke Enchantment.

  “Well done, Boo-boo!” Hagos said proudly. “That is not an easy thing to do. Did you see that, Deela?” Hagos called over to her. “Perfect first time.”

  Deela looked up from her knitting and smiled. It was wonderful, she thought, to see Hagos proudly teaching his daughter the secrets of Enchantment. “Very nice,” she said.

  Alex was buzzing. “That is so clever,” she said.

  Hagos nodded. He was pretty pleased with the system himself. “This is how all the Twilight Hauntings got into the codex. You see, by the time I was making them, my rather hopeless assistant, Sol, had already left Rekadom and taken the codex with him. But I always hoped I would see it again one day.”

  Alex was busy flipping through the pages to find what she wanted. “Poppa,” she said, “you see it says here, ‘One is One, Two is One, Tau is Three’?”

  Hagos looked a little warily at his daughter. “Yes?”

  “And then here, ‘One to make it. Three to break it’?”

  “Yes. Indeed.”

  Alex thought her father looked awkward, but she pressed on. “That means there are three things you need in order to break the Hauntings, right? And they are my Hex cards, the codex and the Tau. And they all have to be together at the same time.”

  “Indeed. This is the Triad. For this the cards and the Tau must be in their places in the codex,” Hagos said stiffly. He did not like where this was going.

  “And then the sealed pages will open to reveal the Disenchantment, won’t they?”

  “Well, they would, yes.”

  “Which means,” said Alex excitedly, “that all we need to do to get rid of all the Hauntings is get the Tau back from the king.”

  Hagos sighed. He knew he was about to disappoint his daughter, and he really did not want to spoil the moment. “Unfortunately,” he said, “I believe the Tau no longer exists.”

  Alex was aghast. “Why do you say that?”

  Hagos drew her to the window. “You see the Iron Tower?”

  Alex nodded. Even lit by the morning sun, it was dark and gloomy. With its windows sealed with iron shutters, it looked blind, and its gray granite stones seemed to suck in the sunlight.

  “The Tau is in there,” Hagos said. “Belamus made me watch him throw it in. Its Enchantment will be destroyed by now. The Wraiths will have consumed it.”

  “But how did he get it into the Tower? It’s all closed up,” Alex asked.

  “There’s a concealed opening above the door, for the safe disposal of any Enchanted object or entity. In the old days all of us Enchanters used it. It was essential when I was trying to produce the Gray Walker. That was the toughest Haunting I’ve ever done, because it had no substance at all. All the other Hauntings, even the Xin, were worked around something physical—the Xin were small threads of spun silk, Alex, I can see you were going to ask—but it is the most delicate and difficult Enchantment to keep an entity together that has no substance. And do you know that once you Engender a Wraith there is no getting rid of it? I had so many that went wrong and they all had to be housed somewhere safe. The Iron Tower was perfect.” Hagos smiled. “I remember one morning I was particularly grateful for it when Sol put his pet spider in an Enchanting box as a joke and the wretched thing would not stop growing. We got it into the Iron Tower in the nick of time.”

  Alex shuddered. “Is the spider still in there?”

  “I sincerely hope so,” Hagos said.

  “Then surely the Tau is still in there too,” Alex said.

  Hagos shook his head gloomily. “The Tau has a finely balanced Enchantment. It is one part of a Triad, which makes it very delicate. I do not believe it can survive the rogue Wraiths in the Iron Tower.”

  “But you don’t know that for sure, do you?” Alex persisted.

  “I am ninety-nine percent sure,” Hagos said.

  “But not one hundred percent? Poppa, the Tau is way too important to give up on,” Alex persisted. “It’s our only chance to get rid of the Hauntings.”

  Hagos tried to smooth things over. “Now, don’t you worry about those Hauntings, Boo-boo. Once I find the handkerchief, we can make a new life somewhere safe, far away from them.”

  Alex was shocked. “Poppa, no! You can’t just run away and leave all that bad Enchantment behind. You made that mess. You have to put it right.”

  Hagos looked a little uncomfortable. “What’s done is done. Please don’t worry, Boo-boo—”

  “Alex!” Alex told him angrily. “I’m Alex.”

  “Alex. Sorry. Look, Alex, it will be okay. We’ll be fine.”

  “And what about everyone else?” Alex demanded. “Will they be fine? What about all the people whose lives you’ve ruined with your horrible Hauntings? What about when all your old Enchantments wear out and the Hauntings Turn and start attacking everyone whether they are Enchanters or not? Don’t you even care?”

  Hagos adopted a soothing tone that only annoyed Alex more. “Of course I care. But there is nothing I can do.”

  Alex was silent for a while. “Yes there is,” she said quietly. She thrust the codex into her father’s hand. “You have the codex. My cards are inside. Now y
ou go get the Tau. Complete the Triad.”

  Hagos shook his head wearily. “Alex. Listen. If I open the door to the Iron Tower I will let out all the horrors inside—bad Enchantments that will have become even more dangerous over the years. And like I said, I doubt the Tau has even survived. So what would be the point?”

  “The point is not to give up.” Alex’s voice was raised now. “You have to try. You have to.”

  Hagos shook his head miserably.

  Alex felt a wave of anger wash over her. “Clean up your mess, Poppa!” she yelled, and stormed back into her bedroom and slammed the door.

  Deela looked up from knitting her squid. “She has a point, you know,” she said.

  “Don’t you start,” Hagos snapped. He stared gloomily out the window at the implacable mass of the Iron Tower.

  The slam of the bedroom door woke Benn with a start. “Hey. What is it?” he asked, blearily sitting up. “What’s wrong?”

  “Poppa,” Alex said. “He’s wrong. All wrong.”

  Chapter 17

  The King Calls

  SOME TEN MINUTES LATER—WHILE Alex was still explaining to Benn her father’s complete lack of responsibility—there came an apologetic knock on the bedroom door.

  Remembering how Danny had never let an argument fester, Hagos had decided to make the first move. “Alex?” he said.

  Feeling a little sheepish about her outburst, Alex opened the door.

  Hagos looked relieved. “Would you both like some coffee? Oh, do you drink coffee? Perhaps you’re a little young for it. Um . . . now, what else have we got?” He looked questioningly at Deela.

  “I have no idea,” Deela said. “I’ve only been here a day.” She looked at Alex. “It was only yesterday morning that your dear father rescued me from the dungeons. He is a good man, Alex. Despite his faults.”

  “What faults?” Hagos asked sharply.

  Deela ignored him. “Actually, I think there is some mint tea in a jar thingy above the sink.”

  “I’ll make it,” Alex said, glad of something to do. She went over to the tiny kitchen alcove, opened a small cupboard above the sink and took down the tea caddy.

  Hagos wandered over. “So long ago since you were here and you were so tiny, and yet you remember Pearl’s tea cupboard,” he murmured.

  Alex looked at the tea caddy. The little figures dancing around it holding hands, the detail rubbed away by years of use, were achingly familiar. She flipped open the lid, the evocative smell of dried mint swam into her head, and she was suddenly back with her mother, clutching her long embroidered skirt, listening to her soft, singsong voice as she talked to “my little Boo-boo.”

  Alex stood immobile for some seconds and then she turned and threw herself into her father’s arms. “Poppa!” she said, tears streaming down her face. “I do remember . . . I remember so much. Oh, Poppa.”

  Relieved she was not angry with him anymore, Hagos hugged his daughter.

  While Alex and Benn drank mint tea by the fire, Hagos fussed around at his desk, glancing out the window every now and then. Suddenly he called out, “No! No! Go away!”

  Deela, Alex and Benn leaped up and Hagos swung around with a look of panic on his face. “It’s the king. He’s on his way here!”

  Deela grabbed what she thought of as her “Min cloak” and threw it on. “Stop panicking, Hagos,” she told him.

  “Boo-boo, Benn. You must hide! Oh, but where . . . where?” Hagos gazed uselessly around.

  Deela was already hurrying Alex and Benn across the room. “There’s a cupboard in the wall of your room. They can hide in there.”

  “It will be fine, Poppa,” Alex said as she disappeared through the curtained-off arch into the little room with the trundle bed where Deela now slept.

  Deela opened a hidden door in the wainscoting to reveal a dark, cobwebby space. It was not inviting. “I know it’s not ideal, but you can both squeeze in,” she said. “It won’t be for long, and the door’s thick enough to put the Jackal off the scent.”

  The mention of Jackal sent a chill down Alex’s spine. She scrambled inside and was surprised to find how deep the cupboard was; it went right back into the thick wall of the tower. Benn followed, and as he curled himself up beside Alex, they heard banging on the front door and a yell of “Open up, Hagos! There’s a dead Jackal out here. What’s going on?”

  Deela hurriedly closed the cupboard door on Alex and Benn; it fastened with a subdued click. Benn gave it a tentative push, but it did not move. It was not a good feeling—they were locked in until someone let them out. He just hoped that someone was Hagos or Deela and not a Jackal.

  Deela pulled her hood down over her face and walked out to join Hagos. She was in time to see him open the door to the king, who was glowering outside on the landing, wearing a profusion of clashing silks. “Gracious me,” Hagos was saying, “what has happened to the poor creature?”

  “Poor creature my foot,” said the king. “This is your doing, RavenStarr.”

  “Belamus, I swear to you, I have not set foot outside this door.”

  “Humph. It is most inconvenient. This means I am down to four Jackal now. Now let me in. I wish to see the Hawke egg. At once!”

  Deela saw Hagos glance over his shoulder to check that all was safe, and she gave an imperceptible nod. Hagos threw open the door and the king, followed by his four remaining Jackal, came in. As Hagos escorted the king across to his desk to show him the Enchanting boxes and the Hawke egg, one of the Jackal dropped onto all fours and began sniffing the floor. From beneath the shadows of her hood, Deela watched it anxiously.

  Inside the cupboard Alex sat with her knees up by her chin, feeling as if she was being squashed into a jar. Benn wriggled to try to get comfortable and stuck his elbow in her ear. Alex pressed herself even farther back and found she was sitting on a lump. It was a small piece of knotted cloth—smooth, fine cotton, soft to the touch, with scalloped edges—which she wound around her fingers in an effort to calm herself. She hated enclosed spaces.

  Alex noticed that Benn’s breathing was becoming fast and panicky. The atmosphere was stifling and there seemed to be no air coming in at all. In an effort to quell her own rising panic, Alex tried thinking about the Tau, remembering how protected she had felt when she had held it on Oracle Rock. How she wished she were with the Tau now . . .

  Suddenly, Alex felt something shift. Hoping she’d found more space, she leaned back and felt as though she were on the edge of a great precipice. Giddy with the sense of height and breathless with the fear of it, she gasped.

  “Alex, are you okay?” Benn whispered.

  There was no reply.

  Alone in the cupboard, Benn called out in terror, “Alex, Alex!”

  But Alex was gone.

  Alex was falling into an abyss. Spinning and whirling through a howling gale of shrieks and screams, buffeted by a freezing wind, she curled herself tightly into a ball as she flew through the darkness, her hands over her mouth to keep out the choking dust that bit into her eyes and filled her ears. Tumbling around and down as though on a crazy helter-skelter, Alex heard distant voices chanting, snatches of a sung melody, a piercing shriek of terror, a sudden rush of water, a crack of thunder, a graveside dirge, desolate and low, and the lost and lonely yip-yip-yip of an abandoned dog. As she fell, a forest of sticky tendrils brushed against her, snatching at her clothes, and a waft of putrid breath caused her to retch. Tumbling past a myriad of yellow eyes, through the soft hissing of snakes and eerie flashes of blue lightning, Alex at last came to a stop in a sudden softness that enfolded her. She curled up like a little pill bug waiting, and there she stayed, bouncing gently up and down in what felt like a giant sticky hammock.

  Still clutching the handkerchief, Alex lay in the bluish gloom, listening to the sounds surrounding her—a cacophony of furtive rustlings, clickings, twangings, tinny bell-like sounds and a heavy, breathy wheezing filled the air. Warily, she uncurled herself a little, and a tremor ran through the hammoc
k. Out of the darkness she saw a cluster of eight tiny points of red light. The lights pulsed slowly, like a heartbeat, and Alex froze with fear.

  Alex forced herself to think. Her fingers found the threads of the hammock, which stuck to her like glue. She lifted her hand and the threads came with it. Another tremor ran through the hammock and the eight eyes mirrored the movement. Alex knew she must stay still. She remembered how she had once seen a beautifully delicate moth trapped in a spider’s web. Unable to free the creature without injuring it, she had watched as its every struggle had brought the spider a step closer, until suddenly the spider had pounced and the moth was crumpled up like a tiny paper bag.

  Alex had worked it out now. The eight eyes belonged to a giant spider, and the hammock was its web. And she was the moth.

  Chapter 18

  Discovered

  SCRITCH-SCRATCH . . . SCRITCH-SCRATCH.

  Benn heard the Jackal rake its claws down the cupboard door, and then came a deep, throaty sniffing. He curled up into a defensive ball and waited.

  Now came the reedy tones of the king. “There’s someone in the wainscoting. A door! I see a door!” The faint sound of a pointy-toed silk shoe tapping on the door made Benn shrink even further into himself. “Open it!” he heard the king yell. “Open it!”

  In reply came the lower, smoother tones of Hagos. “But Your Majesty, it is but an old store cupboard.”

  “I am being deceived!” the king yelled. “What are you keeping from me?”

  “Your Majesty, we keep nothing from you,” Hagos was protesting. Benn wished he wouldn’t. He just wanted to get it over with. To get out of the hateful cupboard and deal with whatever was coming.

  But Hagos would not give up. “Your Majesty,” he was saying. “Inside that closet are the Hawke Meister’s tools of Engenderment. They need darkness and tranquility. To avoid contamination, they must be kept away from other Engendered creatures—like your Jackal. If you open that door, your Hawke will never attain the magnificence it deserves.”