Lilian's Spell Book

by Toby Litt

  ‘What, two or three?’

  ‘Thirty-three,’ said Mrs. Willows.

  I must have looked satisfyingly amazed, because she said, ‘I know, that was my reaction. They told me that they wanted to send it out to all their friends, instead of the usual, boring change of address card. I remember Mr. Gatward wasn’t very pleased when I told him. He wanted other people to be able to buy it.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. It seemed that neither Matthew and Gracie nor Mr. Gatward had been entirely honest about what had happened.

  ‘Why are you interested, my dear?’

  Jack had wandered away, and was closely examining some superheroes on the label of a tin of spaghetti hoops.

  I explained that we’d had Matthew and Gracie round for dinner, and they’d mentioned how they first discovered the village.

  ‘You were checking out their story, were you?’ Mrs. Willows said. ‘Seeing if I would back it up?’

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘they seem unusually interested in our house. I wondered if that really had all come from reading Mr. Gatward’s books.’

  Mrs. Willows leant towards me. ‘You catch on fast, I can see. I wouldn’t trust a single word they said. They pretend to farm the land, but I’ve heard they have produce delivered and then pass it off as their own. Everything about the pair of them’s fake.’

  ‘And the way they dress,’ I said.

  ‘They’re like cartoons,’ said Mrs. Willows. ‘What she wears hurts my eyes, sometimes.’

  I described their outfits from the night before.

  ‘Typical,’ said Mrs. Willows. ‘Though I suppose she has got the legs for it, hasn’t she?’

  ‘They are very friendly, though,’ I said.

  ‘They don’t do anything for other people,’ said Mrs. Willows. ‘Not a thing. That’s what I’ve got against them. They’re selfish.’

  ‘I hope you won’t think that about us,’ I said.

  ‘I heard about your unwelcome visitors,’ said Mrs. Willows. ‘In the cellar. I think you acted quite fairly. Myself, I would have prosecuted. That’s trespass pure and simple.’

  ‘Mum,’ said Jack. ‘Can I open my beer? It’s going warm.’

  ‘Not in here,’ I said, visions of a sugary shook-up explosion in my head. Just then, Mary gave a loud grizzle.

  ‘Another time,’ I said to Mrs. Willows. ‘Have a good weekend.’

  ‘We won’t be seeing you in church tomorrow?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ I said, then almost said, We have our own church. But Mrs. Willows probably knew that already. ‘No, I’m afraid not.’

  ‘I’ll see you next week, then,’ said Mrs. Willows. She certainly knew how to blow hot and cold.

  We sat on the bench opposite the shop to drink our ginger beers. I managed to feed Mary at the same time.

  Jack finished his drink in about ten seconds, burped, then looked turned around to watch the boys.

  After a couple of minutes, he started climbing up and jumping off the bench, seeing if he could fly. I think he thought if he could start flying, that would impress the boys and break the ice.

  Their kickabout got closer and closer to us. In the end, one of them miscued a shot, and it ended up rolling to my feet.

  ‘Well, I’m not going to return it,’ I said.

  Jack was all shy when he picked up the ball, but then he gave it a punt over their heads and suddenly turned into a different boy.

  ‘Can I go, Mum?’

  ‘What have I been telling you?’

  He sprinted away and was soon racing round the common with the best of them.

  I sat there having what should have been a lovely time with Mary. Thoughts of Peter kept getting in the way, though. Because he didn’t believe what I told him about the house, he was living in a different place. It was almost like we were living apart. After his affair with Carpet Superheroes Woman, we had talked once or twice about him moving out. To me, that had seemed to be dodging the issue. Either we loved each other and could live together or we couldn’t. Now, though, I started to think that a separation might not have been a bad idea. It would have allowed us to have a definite reunion, after I’d worked through my emotions. In some ways, I’d tried to gloss the whole thing over – not really allowing myself to be as angry as I was. (Hard to do with the children around needing loving, happy Mummy and Daddy.) This meant that every time I got angry with Peter now, it wasn’t just some minor thing about him doing something wrong or annoying. I brought all my pain into it, wham, just to give it some expression. This wasn’t good for me and it wasn’t anything like fair on him. Officially, I was supposed to have forgiven him for his mistake. But I was starting to see that really I had stored the whole thing up, as resentment. If I revisited the past too intensely, I risked splitting us apart. Peter seemed to be hiding at the moment – emotionally hiding. All this stuff about the TV. I knew he was being male and practical, solving problems, showing me how competent he was. He didn’t understand that there were other kinds of knowledge that had become much more important. He needed to show that he still knew who I was.

  Chapter 41.

  Jack had been playing with the boys for fifteen minutes when I heard a familiar yell.

  I looked over and saw that he was on the ground, clutching his left elbow.

  I knew he’d hate it if I rushed over, all concerned – that would make him look bad – so I waited.

  He picked himself up while the other two stood around looking a bit ashamed of themselves.

  ‘Okay?’ I shouted, without being able to stop myself.

  Jack was inspecting his elbow very closely. Then I saw him grimace, take hold of something between his fingertips and give it a pull.

  He’d obviously taken off a layer or two of skin.

  ‘I’m all right,’ I heard him say to the older boy, the one who’d probably knocked him over.

  They went back to playing, although I could see that Jack’s elbow was red with blood.

  About five minutes later a woman about my age came out of the cottage next to Mr. Gatward’s and shouted across the road, ‘Lunch!’

  I stood up began to walk over, thinking I should introduce myself, but the woman turned away back to the house without spotting me.

  Jack, a little out of breath, ran back to me.

  ‘Let me have a look,’ I said.

  He turned his arm round. There was a nasty scrape about the size of my thumb. It was fairly clean.

  ‘How was that?’ I asked.

  ‘Fine,’ Jack said.

  ‘What are they called?’

  ‘Don’t know,’ he said.

  ‘You’re hopeless,’ I said.

  ‘No,’ said Jack, ‘I won.’

  As we walked past the boys’ cottage, I tried to sneak a glimpse in through the windows. There were net curtains up, and all I could see were a few ornaments outlined along the windowsill. The garden was beautiful, though – hollyhocks shooting off all over the place like pink and white rockets.

  ‘I’m sure we’ll bump into them again,’ I said.

  Jack didn’t seem to mind at all that he hadn’t properly introduced himself.

  Maybe it was for the best, I thought, that they hadn’t suddenly become best friends. The way things were at the moment, inviting them over to the house might not be the greatest idea.

  When we got back, I handed Mary over to her father and made us all a ploughman’s lunch.

  ‘Can you go and call Mr. Gatward?’ I asked Jack, then whispered, ‘And no sneaky flying, okay?’

  Jack nodded, tore his eyes from the TV and headed up to the attic.

  ‘What was that?’ Peter asked.

  ‘Jack’s learning to fly,’ I said.

  ‘Oh,’ said Peter, still mostly absorbed in what he was watching, which involved fast-moving cars. ‘Right.’

  I needed to say something.

  ‘Can you take them out this afternoon? I need a bit of a break.’

  ‘Sure,’ said Peter. ‘We can go for a drive. Explore
the area.’

  Mr. Gatward was a little subdued as he ate his cheese and pickle sandwich. ‘I have confirmed what we thought,’ he said to me. ‘Subsequent to 1580, the Jonsons made several important acquisitions of land from neighbouring estates. Prior to then, they had been selling.’

  ‘So, what next?’ I asked.

  ‘I think I need to work some more on Lilian’s book.’

  ‘Where is it?’ I asked.

  Mr. Gatward patted the breast pocket of his jacket. ‘Very close to my heart,’ he said.

  ‘I think I’d like to look at it this afternoon,’ I said. ‘Would that be all right?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Mr. Gatward, and pulled it out straight away. I could see that he had been chastened by our argument in the crypt. He didn’t want to risk being banished from the house again.

  I picked the book off the table and placed it carefully on top of some cookery books on the shelf – I didn’t want Jack to get it sticky with orange juice, not after almost five hundred years of being kept unsticky.

  ‘You can have it back when I’m finished,’ I said.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Mr. Gatward.

  It was a relief to get through something uninterrupted, for once. We weren’t all that hungry – the house, I had by now guessed, was having that effect on us – but we picked at the food on our plates.

  After coffee, Mr. Gatward went back to the attic and I helped Peter get Mary ready for their trip out.

  As soon as they were off, I went and checked on Mr. Gatward. He had made himself comfortable with a table and chair. Only one document was out in front of him.

  ‘I put everything back where I find it,’ he said.

  ‘I’m sorry about this morning,’ I said. ‘I will think about having the stone lifted. But, for the moment, I want to leave things as they are. I don’t like the idea of digging her up.’

  ‘I thought you believed she wasn’t there.’

  ‘No one likes being proved wrong,’ I said.

  There was a moment’s silence.

  ‘I am making major discoveries all the time,’ said Mr. Gatward. ‘But they seem quite small stuff compared to what we’ve already found out.’

  I patted him on the shoulder and said, ‘I’m sure there’s more to come.’

  There was.

  Chapter 42.

  On the way downstairs I popped into the upstairs living room and collected the fire tools. These, I left outside the cellar door. Then I went and fetched all the keys from the kitchen. Finally, I carried everything down into the cellar – including Lilian’s book – and locked the door behind me.

  For quite a few moments, I just sat at the bottom of the stairs. I didn’t have any doubts I was doing the right thing – I had dismissed Father Trovato’s warnings as soon as he had given them. My trust was in Lilian and the house.

  One by one, I opened the doors for which we had keys – the Earth door in the South, the Water door in the North and the Air Door in the East. Each of them gave me a different emotion. I remembered the thrill of the root touching my neck, the terror that Jack might drown, and the disappointment at the sight of the dull bricks. Then I turned my attention to the final door, the Fire door in the West. Very carefully, I tried inserting the phoenix tops of each of the fire tools into the keyhole and turning them both ways.

  None of them worked. I wasn’t surprised. It would have been much too easy a solution to the puzzle. Really, I had just wanted to get them out of the way, as a possibility.

  Next, I sat down beside the grille that led to the underground chapel and flicked through the pages of Lilian’s spell book.

  There was a lot of writing, which I was frustrated I couldn’t understand. Sometimes the sentences included drawings that looked like suns, moons, buttons, diamonds and pendulums. Lilian had beautiful handwriting – so flowing and without mistakes. There were a few dates 1577, 1579.

  Finally, I was ready. I opened the page marked by the red ribbon.

  I had seen it before, or at first I thought I had, because it was the page with the dark ink drawings of the rooty earth and the whirlpool of water. But there was a difference to these pictures, which it took me a second to work out – each image was speckled with stars.

  I quickly flicked through the book, trying to find the original drawings, but there weren’t any original drawings. These ones I was looking at now were those I’d seen before – without stars, I was sure, because I would have remembered that. Somehow, the stars had come out since then.

  I thought for a second of going upstairs to show Mr. Gatward, but something else grabbed my attention immediately. Out of the corner of my eye, even as I looked back at the Earth drawing, I could see the open Earth door – and the hairy white roots tunneling through the soil like lightning. Amazed, I looked up at the real thing then down at the picture again. They were the same – exactly the same. Hundreds of years after Lilian had drawn the lines of the roots, they still followed exactly the same tracks. They hadn’t grown or shrunk or been pulled out. They started bottom left, then went diagonally right, splitting once, then twice into a shape like a bull’s horns.

  Breathless with excitement, I carried the book over to the door. The stars on the page started to glow as I came nearer. And this was when I noticed something I felt stupid I hadn’t spotted before: the roots were growing up rather than down. That was why one of them had fallen far enough out to stroke me on the back of the neck. If they had been growing normally, it would have just dangled there a couple of inches from the soil.

  I felt a sudden whoosh of vertigo. If these roots were upside down, then either there was a tree beyond this door growing downwards or else in some bizarre way this small part of the house was upside down.

  It was a beautiful but also quite horrifying picture – a tree whose leaves burrowed but whose roots waved in the air.

  I held the book up to my eyes and squinted at the glowing stars. Their light was like red coals in a fireplace. They picked out places where the white roots changed direction or forked in two.

  There were stars shining faintly on the opposite page, too – stars which looked a little woozy, as if their light was coming from under the water.

  I carried the book over to the Water door, the underwater stars getting brighter every moment.

  But the sheer curtain of falling water was in my way. It would be difficult to check that the patterns in the whoosh and swoosh of the whirlpool were the same without getting the book wet.

  I looked hard at the page, trying to memorize how the water swirled around. I also looked at the stars, how they were placed. They looked like a great lopsided V with a necklace of seven pearls at the right end. Then I walked back to the grille and put the book down safely down in the middle. It wouldn’t fit through any of the holes.

  Back at the Water door, I stuck my head through the falling sheet and stared at the image from the page brought to brilliant, churning life. Every eddy and splash and bubble seemed to have come from those old lines of ink. What an artist Lilian had been, on top of everything else.

  Of course, although the water was hitting me, I wasn’t getting wet.

  I flashed back to seeing Jack’s mouth going under the surface, him not being able to breathe.

  It would be difficult, but I knew I needed to check something. I got down on my hands and knees and stuck my head under the water. It was no good, with all the bubbles I couldn’t see any distance at all. I stood up again – and swore.

  After a deep breath, for bravery, I jumped into the Water room.

  I landed badly and thought for a moment that I’d sprained my ankle. I hadn’t been able to see my feet to judge the distance to the floor. A few flexes, though, told me I was all right for the moment. The untouching water swished around me. Best to do what I was here for and get out.

  I took a proper deep breath, ducked down under the surface and then dropped to my hands and knees.

  I found the first of the stars almost straight away. I had practic
ally been standing on it. Another was to the left of this, and another, and another. A whole chain of stars leading in almost a straight line until they turned abruptly right and headed away, slightly more zigzag. It was the V-shape.

  The stars were made of small black five-pointed tiles, neatly inlaid into the white.

  After another big breath, I went back down and crawled towards the hole in the centre of the room. There weren’t any stars beyond this, just white tiles.

  I did something I hadn’t done before – looked straight down into the hole. And there I saw something beyond amazing – stars. Real stars. I knew right away they couldn’t be a painting because they were twinkling.

  Keeping my hands on either side of the hole, I stuck my head down into it as far as I could go –

  – and somehow, by some miracle, stuck my hair up into fresh, cold, salty air.

  I looked all around me, shocked. I was in the middle of a wide, calm, empty sea. And above me was a black sky full of the most heartbreakingly clear stars.

  This water, unlike the water in the house, seemed to support me like real water, although it still didn’t wet me. I floated there, wherever there was.

  I don’t know a lot about astronomy. If it was right in front of me, I could pick you out the Big Dipper and maybe Orion’s Belt. What I was looking for, though, was the V-shape that was drawn in the book and tiled into the floor.

  I turned around and around. But it was only when I’d almost given up and just let myself float there that I spotted it – directly overhead. It was the wrong way round, though. Upside down. I was the wrong way round.

  In trying to turn, I lost my grip on the slippy tiles, and found myself floating up into the sea.

  If I got washed away here, I knew I’d never be able find my way back to the hole into the house.

  I stuck my legs out to the side, toes stiff, and managed to keep my grip on the real world.

  I looked again at the V, this time with its sharp point downwards. And it was still the wrong way round – it was back to front. The little pearl necklace of stars was on the top left and the zigzag shot off to the right.