Lilian's Spell Book

by Toby Litt

  I took one last look at the beauty of the sky, one deep breath of that salty air, then I brought my knees up to my chin, paddled with my hands and pulled myself back into the Water room.

  For just a few seconds, I lay on my back, looking up at the turbulent surface. I felt too overwhelmed to move. But then my lungs started to hurt.

  I stood up, found where the door was, walked over to it and hauled myself out into the cellar.

  Chapter 43.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘Thank you so much.’

  My head was spinning with all the new dimensions opening up in it. Through the Earth door, the house was upside down in the earth. Through the Water door was another universe pressing right up against ours – where day was night, where land was sea, where everything was back to front. And through the Air door was… It couldn’t just be a cube of bricks.

  After a few minutes recovery time, I went back to Lilian’s book and checked once more.

  The star maps on both the Earth and Water pages were exact copies of those in the roots and the tiles. Or maybe that was the wrong way round. Maybe the book had come first and the roots and tiles had been created afterwards.

  I turned the page – to where Air stood opposite Fire. The stars on the Air page were a little hazy, like stars seen through a veil of cloud. They made a shape like a dead-end corridor.

  Wary of being disappointed, but knowing that I was being greedy in asking for any more wonders, I carried the book up to the threshold of the Air room.

  In the centre of the stars was the leaf I had seen the first time Mr. Gatward showed me Lilian’s spell book. As I looked closer, though, I saw that it might be other things, too – a pentagram or a kite or even a human figure. It had five definite points that seemed to be sketchily joined.

  I looked up at the tightly laid bricks of the room, the foursquare corners. I breathed in the stale air.

  Again, I placed the book safely back on the grille, although I wasn’t afraid of it getting soaked as it might’ve been in the Water room.

  I had decided to walk into the middle of the Air room and ask for Lilian’s help. But I took one step inside and fell over – or more like I fell down and down, without actually hitting anything or being sure I was falling.

  The brick floor was collapsing – moving further away from me as I fell towards it.

  I was also falling forwards, though.

  Falling meaning flying.

  The room was opening up all around me – the bricks flying soundlessly back until the eight square corners of the room disappeared into the smooth inner surface of a sphere.

  I touched down on the floor of the huge room, expecting to jar against the bricks, but they cushioned my landing and then gently pushed me back into the air. They were like the softest, springiest bouncy castle ever.

  I didn’t feel weightless. I knew I still weighed the same as when I’d entered the room – more’s the pity. But my weight didn’t matter any more. The air was supporting me.

  I could use my thoughts to climb through it, float through it – just as Jack had done.

  For the first few minutes, I was all over the place. I bounced off the walls and ceiling, which bounced me back. Soon, though, I managed to get a little control. I pushed with my arms and kicked with my legs until I was right in the middle of the room.

  It was only now, looking down beneath me, that I realized quite how huge the sphere was. The space had opened out until it was probably as high as the hall.

  I made a circuit of the room, looking for the stars. And there they were, hanging in the air. They only looked like the star map when you got close to the door and saw them from the correct angle. I had to experiment for a while before I found that out. But with every passing moment, I grew better and better at flying. It wasn’t something I needed to learn, more like something I had always been able to do but had become a little rusty at. I suppose we spend so much time flying in our dreams – or at least I do – that we’re actually pretty good at it. I felt amazing, like I’d always wanted to feel. I’d come home to this skill.

  I made my way to the very middle of the sphere and hung there motionless. Then, for a laugh, I stretched until I was lying flat. The air was the most comfortable mattress you could imagine. I closed my eyes and rested there.

  The most unpromising-looking room had turned out to be the most exciting of all. What was I always telling Jack? Don’t judge things on first impressions, give them a chance.

  Was I going to be able to tell him that I could fly, too? Probably not. It would annoy him, and he’d also want to come down here with me. I didn’t want to share this. Unless… I thought about Mary. How she had giggled when Lilian held her up in the air of our bedroom. It would be wonderful to have my baby with me. What games we could play! Then, wisely, I dismissed the idea as too dangerous. She might fall. Look how far down it was. But the door was locked, and Lilian wouldn’t let her come to any harm. She’d catch her.

  After a couple of spins and a forward roll that made me feel a little sick, I made my way to the door.

  The room seemed to sense that I was leaving as it began to collapse back into its foursquare form as I moved away from the centre.

  The marvellous patterns in the brickwork. Now I understood them. As the walls contracted, the bricks slid silently into place. The room was the most amazing 3-D puzzle.

  It was back to how it had been before. Only now, I could see there were a few places where the bricks had little holes in them. These were the remains of the star map.

  I fetched the book and checked they were the same, making that long dead-end shape – they were.

  Placing the book back on the grille for the final time, I went round the doors, closing them one by one – first Earth, then Water.

  I was just about to close the Air door when I heard a flicking sound. I immediately thought it might be the tail of a rat, coming up through the grille. When I turned around, I saw Lilian’s book was now open on its back, and the pages were being fluttered this way and that – as if someone had left it on a windowsill and it was being read by the wind.

  This wasn’t the wind, though. I knew it was Lilian, reunited with her work of all those years ago.

  I watched as the pages were opened, pressed down for a while then flicked away from. This was Lilian’s quicksilver personality, jumping from one thing to the next, brilliant, impatient. Not like me at all. I wondered again why she had chosen me.

  As I watched, the red ribbon was slowly drawn out of the book. It dangled in the air from two points, about waist height. Then it started to turn in on itself, becoming a circle, looping around itself at the top, pulling away until the circle became smaller and smaller. I could see that a simple knot was being tied into it. Another knot followed, circle and closing circle, and then a third and final knot. They were all in a line at one end of the ribbon.

  The book on the grille had finally stopped fluttering. It was wide open at the page showing Air and Fire. This was Lilian where placed the knotted ribbon. Then, to make her point even clearer, the book snapped shut – and I felt the room empty of anyone but myself.

  Wow.

  Chapter 44.

  Something made me want to get out of the cellar quite quickly. I wanted to think about what had happened, but somewhere else – out in the garden, maybe.

  Before that, though, I took a close look at the keyhole in the Fire door. I seemed to have run out of keys I could try in it. The shape of the hole was unusual. Perhaps because I’d started to think about things being upside down and back to front, I recognized it. It was a wavy flame, very thin, starting around a circle and extending downwards. That would make for a very unusual key. Certainly not like any of those I’d seen in the house.

  I stepped back to look at the whole door. It was made of very smooth dark wood, very plain and undecorated, apart from a large oblong shape right in the middle of the top half. Here, the wood was cut in by about an inch. It looked like a window, but not one you co
uld see anything through.

  I carried the fire tools up to the top of the stairs, making a bit of a racket as did. Then I brought up the keys and the book.

  For one second, I thought I might have been locked in – I didn’t know who by. But the key turned in the door, and I swayed out into the hall, arms full of stuff.

  Mr. Gatward come out of the kitchen holding a cup and saucer.

  ‘I couldn’t find you anywhere,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid I helped myself.’

  Did I believe him? Or had he suspected that I’d gone down to the cellar and waited for me there all this time?

  ‘Oh, that’s fine,’ I said. I couldn’t have looked much more guilty. ‘I’ll join you in a minute.’

  I handed over Lilian’s book to him – one less thing to carry. He seemed relieved to get it back.

  ‘What are these knots?’ he asked.

  ‘I put them there to help me remember something,’ I said.

  ‘You should be careful with a ribbon this old,’ he replied, but didn’t say anything more.

  After putting the fire tools back by the fireplace, I went downstairs to join Mr. Gatward.

  ‘Find anything out?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, very cool. ‘Did you?’

  ‘Not really,’ I said. ‘I was trying to open the last door. But what I thought was the key didn’t work.’

  ‘Maybe it’s something more complicated than just a key,’ Mr. Gatward said. ‘Everything upstairs seems to be coming out far too neatly.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

  ‘The family’s fortunes turned, after the success of Lilian’s experiments. But the accounts suggest they were covering this up. Which is just what you’d expect.’

  ‘Why are you interested in this?’ I said. ‘Surely there’s more interesting things to be looking into.’

  ‘Well,’ said Mr. Gatward, holding up Lilian’s book, ‘the most interesting is this – and you deprived me of it.’ He seemed to be joking.

  Swiftly, I took the book back from him, and opened it at the page for the Earth and Water drawings – but the stars had faded completely away, as if they’d never been there.

  ‘Yes?’ asked Mr. Gatward.

  I knew I could roughly remember the shapes of the star maps, even if they weren’t in front of me. I already had a suspicion of what they were.

  ‘Tell me what you think these drawings mean,’ I said.

  I wasn’t expecting to hear anything useful. But Mr. Gatward began by saying, ‘The four elements, as discovered by the Greeks. The philosopher Aristotle included a fifth one – aether. He said the stars were too imperishable to be made out of water, earth, air or even fire. Pretty advanced thinking.’ I thought of the stars I had just seen. It was hard not to believe they were made of something purer than anything we encountered on earth. ‘Four elements,’ continued Mr. Gatward, ‘one room for each. Alchemy was about bringing everything into play at once. These rooms were part of whatever machine they used to produce gold. Perhaps they just needed a supply of each element. The doors would be open. The whatever-it-was right in the middle. Of the elements, the most crucial was fire. Alchemists used fire constantly. And as time went on, they got better at heating things up. Even though no one discovered the philosopher’s stone – or we thought they didn’t – a lot of genuine discoveries were made. William Jonson was no doubt messing around with his forge when he burned the house down.’

  Whilst Mr. Gatward talked, I helped myself to tea. It was slightly stewed, but I needed something strong.

  ‘What about the stars?’ I asked. ‘You said before there were lots of astrology books in the attic.’

  ‘Almost as many as there are alchemy books.’

  ‘Are there any links between the two?’

  ‘Oh, the whole Elizabethan world-view was of interlinked and overlapping forces. That’s why alchemy became so complicated, taking people years to become adept at even the basics. If, for your experiment, everything has to be right – including the stars – then you might have to wait years for things to align.’

  ‘And some of the star signs are fire signs, aren’t they? And Pisces is water…’ I was remembering all those horoscopes I’d read, over the years.

  ‘Follow me,’ said Mr. Gatward.

  He led me through into the living room.

  ‘Turn the lights on,’ he said, as he moved across to the tapestry curtains and started to pull them shut.

  I did as he asked – remembering, even as he turned around to face me, that the curtains were decorated with the twelve signs of the zodiac.

  ‘Here we are,’ he said. ‘Have a look.’

  I came closer. There was Sagittarius with his curved bow, looking like he was about to shoot an arrow into Scorpio’s tail. There was Leo with his bum uncomfortably close to Virgo’s head.

  The figures were made of gold thread that glimmered as I moved towards it. The whole tapestry was a sky map.

  ‘It’s the Northern sky,’ said Mr. Gatward. ‘I think. What you’d see north of the equator.’

  I picked out a few more star signs I knew. Gemini, the twins toppling down onto Cancer, the crab.

  ‘Now,’ said Mr. Gatward, ‘here’s the magic. Go and turn the lights off.’

  I flicked the switches.

  ‘And close the door,’ said Mr. Gatward.

  I pushed it shut, then turned around. It was magic – the stars were shining in my living room. Through small holes in the tapestry, the sun shone from outside.

  ‘Whoa,’ I said.

  ‘It’s a masterpiece,’ said Mr. Gatward. ‘There’s nothing else like it in the world. Not that I know of. Not in this form.’

  I was hardly listening to him. Almost straight away I had picked out the shapes of the star maps.

  Easiest to spot was the V-shape, which was near the top, upside down. What had that been? I needed to turn the lights back on to check, but I wanted to take in the marvel of it.

  ‘If you asked me,’ said Mr. Gatward, ‘I’d say this is something Lilian designed. She may even have helped make it, too. Perhaps this is what they were doing, confined to the house for all those years.’

  Yet again I had one of those moments when I couldn’t believe that this house, these things, were owned by Peter and me. I was starting to understand better why we had been allowed to take them over – the Catholicism, Father Trovato, and the agreement he wanted from us. But all these riches, which we couldn’t sell, seemed to come from another world.

  I was now close enough to stick my little finger into one of the holes. Mr. Gatward stood to the side, a couple of beams of light landing on his face and making strange shapes there.

  ‘But why are you suddenly interested in astrology?’ he asked. ‘Is that what you found out, down in the cellar?’

  ‘Mr. Gatward,’ I said, turning to look at him. ‘What are you really after?’

  ‘Glory,’ he said, soon enough. ‘Historical glory. If I can publish something about this, with full documentation, it will be a sensation. You will allow me to write it up, won’t you?’

  ‘This full documentation,’ I said. ‘That would include knowing where Lilian’s remains were.’

  ‘I could probably work around that,’ Mr. Gatward said. ‘But I can’t deny, it would be very useful.’

  ‘And there’s nothing else?’ I asked.

  ‘Isn’t that enough?’ he asked. Did I believe him? I wasn’t sure.

  ‘Not enough for some people,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, I’d want to live long enough to see the work published,’ he said. ‘But I’m not after any other kind of immortality.’

  His even mentioning the word made me suspicious of him all over again.

  ‘Thank you for showing me this,’ I said. ‘How did you know about it?’

  ‘It’s in the inventory,’ he replied. ‘I saw the constellations, the holes and worked the rest out for myself.’

  ‘But you’ve never seen it before?’ I asked.

 
‘Closed, yes,’ he said. ‘But not in it’s full splendour.’

  We stood back to admire it – a whole bright universe.

  ‘They were so clever, weren’t they?’ I said.

  ‘They were marvellous,’ said Mr. Gatward. ‘That’s why I love them so much.’

  Just then, I heard Jack coming through the front door. His shout of ‘Mu-um!’ was unmistakable – as was Mary’s wailing, which I could also hear.

  Mr. Gatward pulled the curtains back into place while I went through to give Jack a hug.

  ‘Did you have a nice time?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Can I have some juice?’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Peter, holding Mary out towards me. ‘She just started crying. I think she’s hungry.’

  ‘I bet you are,’ I said to the little love.

  Mr. Gatward came through and said hello.

  ‘Did you have a lie down?’ Peter asked.

  ‘A bit of one,’ I said.

  Chapter 45.

  Jack had decided that he wanted to be a professional footballer, so he needed to do training. Peter played with him in the garden, and I sat on the bench cuddling Mary, watching and shouting encouragement.

  I tried to concentrate on just what was in front of me – us, being a family – but the stone phoenix carved into the wall was there above their heads.

  Eventually, Peter came over to have a sit down, leaving Jack to kick around by himself.

  ‘He’s good,’ Peter said.

  ‘He made some friends this morning,’ I said. ‘Well, almost.’

  I told him about the boys on the green.

  ‘It’s a start,’ said Peter. ‘I’m sure he’ll see them again.’

  We were so similar in what we said and thought.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I saw where they live.’

  ‘That how he scraped his elbow?’ Peter asked. ‘Sliding tackle?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.