Lilian's Spell Book

by Toby Litt

  ‘Hey,’ shouted one of the men. ‘What was that?’

  P.C. Hollerhan and Longbone started to run.

  I couldn’t stop the cellar key from grinding as it turned in the lock. The door came open as Hollerhan banged out onto the landing, Longbone’s lighter footsteps doing their best to keep up.

  I pulled the door open and swung it shut behind me. I dropped the keys once before getting the right one into the lock. I was making so much noise. I tried to grab the keys dangling down but I lost my grip on the door-knocker.

  Never in my life have I heard anything as loud as that brass bird sliding down the stairs. It went fast but bumped and rapped sharply every time it hit a step. No way Hollerhan and Longbone wouldn’t know exactly where I was now.

  I locked the door just before the handle started to turn.

  ‘Mrs. Jonson,’ Hollerhan said. ‘Mrs. Jonson.’

  I ran down the stairs and began unlocking doors – still careful to do them in order: Earth, Water and then all three Air doors.

  All the time, Hollerhan and Longbone, speaking over one another, were trying to persuade me to open up.

  In each room, the stars were clearly visible – glowing like points of flame.

  I heard Hollerhan get on his radio and inform someone that I’d been found and that I’d locked myself in the cellar.

  ‘You’re not very well, Mrs. Jonson,’ said Longbone. ‘You’ve had a very serious bump on the head. You don’t know what you’re doing.’

  I did.

  ‘They’ll be back in five,’ said Hollerhan.

  ‘Break the door down,’ said Longbone. ‘Do it now.’

  I heard Hollerhan take a few steps back. I wasn’t about to let them stop me, though. The final piece of the puzzle was about to be set in place.

  As Hollerhan slammed against the cellar door, I heaved the brass phoenix up and eased its wooden backing onto the Fire door. The wooden panel fitted perfectly into the wooden hole. It had been hundreds of years since these two pieces of wood had touched, but they reunited as snugly as if the carpenter had just laid them aside. I felt the weight being taken off my hands as the door healed itself up.

  There was a splintering sound from upstairs. Hollerhan would be through, probably next time he slammed his shoulder against the door.

  I also heard a lot of sirens approaching the house. They couldn’t all have arrived so quickly unless they’d been hiding nearby. Hollerhan would soon have help breaking the door down.

  I wished I’d had time to think about everything that had brought me to this point. I wish I could say I appreciated what I was about to do. But I didn’t – I just grabbed hold of that brass phoenix and hammered like hell.

  I knew something very strange was happening the moment the first clap sounded. At first I thought it was the space behind the door, echoing. But then I realized that Hollerhan and Longbone had gone completely silent. No further smash on the cellar door came.

  Ever since I started on this, I’d been looking for keys – keys to open doors. I hadn’t realized that there was no key for the final door – or no key that I could get hold of. This door could never be opened from the outside. Instead, I just needed to find the right way to knock on the door and ask to come in. Because the key – I heard it now – scraping into the lock – this key was on the inside.

  The door began to open and I saw the fierce light starting to glow around its edges.

  I stepped back and the door swung all the way open, showing me the way into the Fire room.

  PART FOUR

  Chapter 57.

  It was vast, so big I couldn’t see the edges. Was this the hell that Father Trovato had promised me if I kept on with my dangerous experiments? The flames that licked the doorframe and blazed up inside the first feet of the room gave off no heat. Like the water, like the air, they didn’t touch me. Surely, if it was hell and I’d been lured here by some devil, I would be starting to burn?

  I looked into the blazing room, knowing that I would have to step inside – knowing that once again I would have to put my whole trust in Lilian and in the house.

  In the very heart of the fire – I could see it clearly – there stood a figure. I thought for one mad moment that it must be my husband, and that he must be burning to death. But the figure stood there, quite calm, quite still, completely unaffected by the furnace-like blaze surrounding them. I could see them through the open doorway that, for some reason, wasn’t burning. The fire did not come that far.

  Perhaps I should be clearer. This was not a figure made of flames. This was the outline of a figure where the bright flames left a darker gap. And the gap went all the way to the bricks of the far wall. It was almost as if there were a person-shaped tunnel running through the whole infernal room, from front to back. And there was nothing there to burn, I was sure. This room of our house was totally empty. It was the air itself that seemed to be on fire.

  The light from the burning room scorched into the backs of my eyes. How long before the fire spread? How long before our beautiful old wooden dreamhouse was razed to the ground? But still I didn’t turn and run. Still I stared into the light.

  I knew this figure. With every passing second, I was surer of that.

  I knew her, and I knew she had a message for me.

  As I watched, she put her left hand out and beckoned me towards her. Of course she was left-handed! – I’d known that all along.

  It was madness but I felt certain that she wouldn’t let me come to harm. It was a while since I had started to trust her. But did I trust her enough to trust her with my life?

  Of course I hesitated. Nobody wants want to die like this. Nobody wants to be burnt alive. What I was about to do was against all reason.

  Reason, though, was something I had given up on or which had given up on me quite some time before.

  I nodded to her.

  The figure beckoned me again.

  I moved forwards, to the edge of the flames.

  I could see her better now. My eyes seemed to be getting used to the bright light. Was that a smile I could make out among the flames?

  With a final thought for my husband, my children, I stepped over the threshold – into the heart of the burning room.

  Lilian was there, her shape, and we met in the middle of the inferno. It wasn’t hell, though – I had been right about that.

  As she turned around to face me, I saw that she was smiling. Then she looked down, and I saw she had something in her hands. It was her book. I saw the ribbon dangling down beneath it. But the ribbon wasn’t red and the book wasn’t leather, they were both shining molten gold.

  Lilian held the book out to me, offering it. Even though I had been protected from the burning all around me, I felt sure I would feel a terrible heat from the book. But I took it in my hands, and as her fiery fingers through brushed against mine I did feel something like a heat – a fire running me. I was being given courage for what was to come. This was Lilian’s gift to me. I looked into Lilian’s golden eyes and thanked her, again and again. More than anything, I wanted her to speak. I had been pursuing her so intensely, and if she didn’t speak now I would never know what her voice sounded like.

  Silently, Lilian put her hand on mine and gently got me to open the book where the page was marked.

  Chapter 58.

  I saw that the ribbon was now knotted with four knots.

  This brought a lump to my throat – I had solved the puzzle of each of the doors. Lilian was saying she was pleased with me.

  I looked into the bright pages of the book, where on the left hand page I could see a picture picked out in dark lines. It was something I recognized immediately – it was a plan of the house – but it was more than that. What it looked like most of all was an architect’s plan, all thin ghostly lines showing where floors meet walls and walls meet ceilings. But even though it was on the page, it was in three dimensions – you could see through and around it. On the bottom of the right hand page was something that
was slightly harder to recognize, because I’d never seen it from the outside – the underground chapel. I should have known that straight away because linking the two were a couple of parallel lines that sloped gently down the page. This was the tunnel.

  I looked up at Lilian, hoping now would be the moment she spoke. Perhaps she was about to explain how her experiment had worked. All she did, though, was place her thin finger on the picture. She wanted me to look at the cellar, at the space exactly in the middle of all the doors. I saw that Lilian herself was now standing there and that I was beside her and that what was around us – in reality, if you can call it that – was no longer the house but the picture of the house in her book.

  Lilian motioned for me to move away from her. I still had the book in my hands, the action in front of me repeating itself on the page. I was holding it but I could see us in it.

  As I backed away towards the stairs, I watched Lilian turn once in each direction – Earth, Water, Air, Fire. She then raised her hands and pointed towards the sky that, through the empty roof, I could see was bright with all the constellations on the tapestry. There, too, were the sun and moon. It wasn’t a real sky. It was everything in the sky all at once.

  Finally, Lilian brought her hands down and put them on her belly. And I could see inside her, too – I could see that there was a small child in her womb. It was far too tiny for me to be able to tell whether it was a boy or a girl, but I knew it must be a boy. That was the only explanation – another thing had to be in balance, as well as all these other forces – female and male.

  I glanced quickly down at the book and saw that I’d been right, for there were now two figures standing where Lilian had been, and one of them was her and the other was a fine-looking young man. They looked like Adam and Eve. Was this her visitor, Paul de Joyeuse? Was he the baby’s father? And was the child conceived simply as an accident or as part of their whole experiment? There wasn’t time to think anything through. My head was spinning from all I’d seen already.

  When I looked back at Lilian, I was seeing her from the outside. But that wasn’t such a good word any more. Inside and outside were combining. In a huge rush, out from all four doors, vast jets of force hit Lilian, one after the other.

  The first, from the Earth door, was like the root of a tree, but growing faster than any root had ever done. The one from the Water door was like the jet from the pipe in the Water room but a thousand times stronger. From the Air door came a tornado that twisted faster than the eye could see and snaked slowly from side to side. Finally, from the Fire room, a jet of flame shot out so terrifyingly vast that I thought it would simply blow Lilian away. But she stood in the middle, absorbing all these incredible forces into her body. Then, down from every one of the stars, came beams of pure light. And these she accepted too. This went on for one minute, another. But what did time mean any more?

  Lilian made a gesture with her hand, very definite, and everything stopped all at once, everything disappeared. Everything obeyed her.

  Lilian was alone, floating in dark space. I looked at the book. The page was blank. Then the stars came out above Lilian, the earth appeared beneath her feet.

  She looked at me, and smiled, and nodded. I saw her lips move. ‘Goodbye,’ she said.

  And then, where before I’d seen the baby in her womb, I saw another shape begin to glow – I immediately recognized it as an egg. And the egg cracked, and out from the crack emerged the bright golden winged shape of a phoenix. It stretched its wings for a moment, shook itself loose. Then it took flight.

  And with this Lilian’s body exploded like the big bang, but it didn’t scatter. It stopped in space, in every direction.

  I held the book up to protect my eyes, and on the page which had been empty a moment before I saw the house forming again, being created from the inside. This time, though, the lines it was made out of were sparkling gold – every one of them.

  I closed the book.

  I understood. Lilian had shown me what had happened the first time – when her alchemy had succeeded, and she had become both gold and immortal – immortal because gold. And she had gone into the fabric of the house and become one with it. She was it’s glistering essence, in every board and brick and panel.

  Then it was over. I was back in the fire room, which was still burning brightly. But I was on my own. The small gold book, with its dangling ribbon, still glowing molten hot, was cool in my hands.

  I felt deeply upset that I would never see Lilian again. I started to weep – and my tears, when they hit the cover of the book, hissed and turned to steam.

  Chapter 59.

  I walked out of the Fire room, expecting something to happen. I thought the book might instantly become hot and I would be horribly burnt by it.

  And something did happen – the flames of the room came out with me. It was as if I was coated in them, aflame but not aflame. I was like a match head, but I wasn’t being burnt away.

  I walked over to the grille and to the bottom of the stairs. I climbed the stairs and unlocked the cellar door.

  The way was blocked. P.C. Hollerhan was standing there.

  ‘All right, then,’ I said, ‘arrest me.’ But he was motionless. He looked alive and dead at the same time. He had a watch on his wrist. I looked at it, and saw that it was exactly midnight and that the second hand was trembling but not moving.

  I pushed against him, and he fell backwards to the floor. Longbone was there a few paces away, speaking into the mobile phone. There were some other figures, too, over by the door.

  I walked across to them, leaving a trail of flames behind me.

  More policemen were there, frozen whilst running in. Mike the taxi driver was with them. And behind came Jack, sprinting, and next to him Peter carrying Mary. Bringing up the rear, I was glad to see, was Mr. Gatward.

  The front door was open. I could see more figures out there, all statue-like.

  I thought for one instant that something moved, but it must have been the light from the flames glinting against a shiny surface.

  I was standing in the middle of the hall. My flames lit up the ceiling with its carvings, they reflected up off the shiny parquet.

  And pretty soon my halo of flames began to do their job – they spread out – all Mrs. Forster’s compulsive waxing and polishing and making flammable which she never understood, now it was finally paying off. The wood caught fire. The fire spread from where I stood at the centre of the circle. Soon it was climbing the walls, attacking the panels. But the people in the room weren’t harmed – I knew they wouldn’t be.

  I stood between Jack and Peter and Mary, watching the flames caressing but not touching them.

  I walked into the dining room. I wanted to see the painting that had started everything. Lilian was there, just as usual – pale, beautiful – but her hands were empty. She had given her spell book to me. I held it in my hands.

  Around me, this room caught fire, too. The table and chairs, the curtains and all the other paintings. The Canaletto. The Constable. I stayed just as cool while the house began to burn.

  I don’t know how long it lasted, the whole thing – it could have been an hour, it could have been a day – I wandered through the house from top to bottom, sometimes walking, sometimes floating, saying goodbye to it, carrying the fire which it needed.

  I visited the library in the attic, running my hands along the spines of the books and watching them burst into flame. I lay down on the four-poster bed until it was a cage of dripping brightness. I wrapped myself in the tapestry curtains, turning the heavens into an inferno. I saw Jack’s Gameboy become a black, bubbling, smoking mess. I saw Mary’s muslins smouldering in a pile on the chest of drawers. And then I pushed past P.C. Hollerhan – completely unhurt by what was going on around him – and went back down into the cellar. Because the walls were stone, there were fewer flames here. The ceiling was burning away though, collapsing to either side, and I could see up one storey, then two. And as the wood burnt, wh
at had been sealed up within it for all those hundreds of years came running out, cascading down the walls, dripping from the roofs – the gold – the gold that both was and wasn’t Lilian – Lilian’s phoenix-body – what Lilian had turned herself into in that one alchemical moment.

  I stood on the grille and watched as snakes of molten gold flowed down the sloping floor and into the hole, down into the sloping tunnel. They ran quickly, these white hot rivers, as if more than gravity was pulling them, as if they knew where they wanted to go. Thin trickles down the stone walls met other trickles as they were tugged down into the hole.

  The doors to each of the four rooms had burned away, and the rooms stood empty, their vast forces exhausted.

  When I raised my eyes, I saw that the frame of the house was almost completely gone. I could see the shape of P.C. Hollerhan, motionless, ridiculous, outlined against the night sky.

  The final few dribbles of gold ran down beneath my feet.

  I held up my hand and watched the last of the flames retreating along my arm until all that was left was a gentle blue halo around my fingers, holding Lilian’s golden book, and then with a flourish of scarlet this went out, too.

  The book suddenly felt heavier, very real.

  I climbed the stone stairs.

  The beautiful house was gone – all that it had left behind was ash, black ash.

  I touched my head. I’d completely forgotten my injury. My head felt different. I didn’t feel like the dark was coming down on me any more.

  As I stepped over the threshold and out of the house, the night wind hit my face and ruffled my hair. There was a clap of thunder and torrential rain began to fall. Beneath my feet, the gravel was already running with muddy water. Time had started again, I could feel it.

  Behind me, I could hear my name being called by voices I didn’t recognize and voices I did. Around me were police cars parked with their blue lights flashing and all their doors wide open.