Blackfoot

by W. R. Gingell

  “I thought you said there was no magic in the ruins. Ages and ages ago.”

  “Well,” said Peter, “it’s not so much that there wasn’t magic: it’s that it was far too strong for me to be able to notice it.”

  “You mean you were wrong.”

  “It was incredibly well-hidden!” protested Peter. “How can I be expected to see something that strong?”

  Annabel made a face in the darkness. “That doesn’t make sense, either.”

  “It does,” said Peter. “Magic is easy to see–”

  “For some people–”

  For most people, said Blackfoot. You’re just special.

  “Hey!”

  “What now?”

  “Blackfoot’s being sarcastic,” said Annabel. “Never mind.”

  “As I was saying, magic is easy to see, even the small stuff. And if you’re really good at it and know how to hide it, that’s when it gets hard to see.”

  “So you were wrong–”

  “Ann–”

  “–and there’s actually a lot of magic in the castle?”

  “Well, if you’re going to put it that way,” said Peter crossly, “yes! I was wrong, all right? With this amount of magic, and how strong it is, the castle could have something as complicated and clever as an Inverted Exit spell.”

  He’s not wrong, said Blackfoot. He’s not right, either, but at least he’s trying.

  “It’s no good my trying,” said Annabel. “I can’t see magic and I don’t know how it works. Peter might as well work at it: he likes magic.”

  “Actually–” began Peter.

  Now you’ve started it! muttered Blackfoot.

  “Actually, I don’t like magic,” said Peter, with the air of one about to give a speech.

  Annabel, hurriedly, said: “Yes, yes, I know. You don’t like magic, you just use it when you need to and the future is in cogs and wheels and tickerboxes and metal blobby things.”

  “They’re solder nodules,” Peter said. “Honestly, Ann: you don’t even listen!”

  “Anyway,” Annabel said, even more hurriedly, “what do you mean by an Inverted Exit spell?”

  “Well, what the cat said made me think: if someone put an Inverted Exit spell on the castle, we would have to go in deeper to get out.”

  “So we can get out.”

  “Yes,” Peter said. “Theoretically.”

  Blackfoot said: No. Not like that, anyway.

  “Why do you know so much about it, anyway?” complained Annabel. Peter opened his mouth to answer, then realised she was talking to Blackfoot, and closed it again.

  I know– began Blackfoot, and then said sharply: Be careful! There’s a hole here!

  His warning came too late: Annabel had already put her foot in the hole. There was the sensation of horrible, unexpected absence, then she pitched forward onto the corridor floor.

  4

  “Ow!” said Annabel, rolling in the dust. Something was bouncing slightly, and it could have been her, but she didn’t think so. “Oh! Blackfoot! Should the floor be movin–”

  This time, the entire section of flooring betrayed her, vanishing beneath her stomach as utterly as it had vanished beneath her foot. Annabel gasped in a dusty breath as time seemed to stop, then something hit her hard everywhere. For a moment she lay where she was, and the eveywhere that had been hit hurt too much to do anything but stay still and groan, or sob, or perhaps she was just breathing.

  Annabel became aware of the blood and Peter’s voice at about the same time. When the first frozen, dream-state of pain had abated a little, they were both waiting for her, bothersome and insistent. She dealt with the blood first, letting it pool at the corners of her mouth where it could drain away into the dust beneath her without having to spit, then mumbled: “Shudda Eter.”

  “That’s right,” said Peter encouragingly. “Tell me to shut up. I did try to catch you, Ann, I just wasn’t quick enough. I’m coming down.”

  “Don’,” Annabel said thickly. “Too ’ar ’own.”

  “I’ll be all right,” Peter said. He was still sounding encouraging, which worried Annabel. It meant that she was probably hurt worse than she’d thought– or at least, that Peter thought so. “Don’t move, Ann. The cat’s already down there somewhere.”

  So that’s what the furry warmth against her cheek was. Annabel, who only seemed to be able to feel the cold at the moment, had vaguely noticed it somewhere in the back of her mind where she kept Blackfoot’s voice.

  As if that had woken her ability to hear him again, she faintly heard him say: Nan? Have you lost any teeth? Broken any bones?

  Annabel considered that, but the question was too involved to answer with her crushed and bloody mouth, so she merely pushed herself up on her forearms and dribbled another warm string of blood into the dust. Pleasingly, her arms held her up better than she’d expected, and when it was possible to breathe without everything hurting quite so much, Annabel clumsily turned herself over. Her pencil was digging into her palm, and the other sharpness there was the corner of her notebook. Annabel scrabbled them together with a decent assortment of dust and debris, and shoved them into her dirty pocket, regardless of the fact that it was still slightly damp. She gazed up at the gaping hole in what had been the floor, surprised to find that she could distinctly see it. She’d thought it was dark in the corridor, but down here beneath the corridor it was darker still, and the hole was a greyish patch instead of the pitch black around her.

  “All right, Ann?”

  “No,” grumbled Annabel, through rubbery lips. She painfully turned her head into her shoulder and wiped her mouth against her flannels. That hurt, but it was better than feeling slimy and painful. She touched her fingers carefully to her lips and said: “Nothing’s broken. I think. My stomach broke the fall. And my mouth.”

  She heard Peter drop clumsily to the floor at last. “Finally!” he said, and there was the click of his fingers snapping. At once light, soft and pulsing, pushed back the darkness.

  Annabel squinted at him, and as she did so, she felt the pull of something painful across her cheek. “Ugh. Why didn’t you make your light before you climbed down? You could have fallen.”

  “You know how I am with heights, Ann! If I’d been able to see it, I would have fallen. It’s awfully high.”

  “I know,” said Annabel. She was sitting now, which was nice. Nicer still, it wasn’t hurting quite so much to keep breathing, and the distant, cold feeling had faded away. Her body once again felt like one piece and not several broken parts. “You can stop biting my sleeve, Blackfoot: I’m fine.”

  “You don’t look fine,” Peter said brutally. “Your mouth is bloody and you’ve got a big cut across your cheek. You’ve probably broken some ribs, too.”

  “I haven’t, you know,” said Annabel, patting about with her hands for somewhere that wasn’t rocky to push herself up from the ground. “I think I was just winded. It’s a good thing I’m so well-padded.”

  Don’t stand up! said Blackfoot’s exasperated voice. You’re still dripping blood on your flannels.

  “All right,” Annabel said, still too shaken to feel like fighting about things when it was simpler just to do as she was told.

  Peter gazed around them, his lively glow of light as curious as he was. “Might as well explore while we’re down here,” he said. “Maybe we really have found the treasury, Ann! Well, the hidden tunnel that leads to it, anyway.”

  Annabel gloomily wiped her mouth on her flannels again. “If we’ve found it by accident, someone else is sure to have found it by now. It’ll be empty.”

  Blackfoot’s voice had a distinct sigh to it. I suppose it’s impossible to convince you both that it’s not the treasury?

  “Not impossible,” said Annabel. “We just don’t want to believe you. Well, would you rather find gold or spiders?”

  Blackfoot gave an unexpected laugh at that, but Peter said in a superior sort of way: “Not gold, Ann: magic! Why would they put boring
old gold and jewels in a treasury?”

  Annabel laughed rudely. “Maybe they should have. Maybe they would have been able to last through the war instead of being over-run. At least you can hire soldiers with gold and jewels.”

  Blackfoot laughed again at the back of her mind, and said: There were gold treasures and magical treasures. But this tunnel doesn’t lead to the treasury.

  “Blackfoot says–”

  “I don’t care what the cat says. What does it know about treasuries?”

  Oh, nothing in the world, said Blackfoot. It’s not as though I spent my youth–

  Annabel stared down at him in surprise, ignoring Peter, who had already wandered away. “What? What did you do when you were young?”

  I did as I was told and didn’t ignore my elders, Blackfoot said.

  “Were you this sarcastic when you were a kitten?” demanded Annabel. “What turned you so bitter?”

  I never was a kitten, said Blackfoot.

  There was another brief, conscious silence, where he seemed to realise that he’d again said something he shouldn’t have said. Annabel broke it to ask: “How can you not have been a kitten?”

  And I was always this bitter, thank you very much.

  “I don’t believe you,” said Annabel, scruffing behind his ears to make him purr. Sometimes, Blackfoot could even be lovely. “Where has Peter gone, do you think?”

  Don’t worry, said Blackfoot, and Annabel heard a distinct purr of laughter to his voice. He’ll be back very quickly, I should think.

  Annabel was about to ask suspiciously why Peter would be back so very quickly, when she heard running footsteps and a sudden, loud hissing. Peter’s light came back into sight again, bobbing a little, but when Peter himself came into sight he was only walking a little more quickly than usual, his hands stuffed into his pockets. Annabel heard Blackfoot chuckle in the back of her mind, and was quite well aware herself that Peter had only slowed down at the last moment to put on a good front.

  He said, just a little more breathlessly than usual: “Bit of a tricky door through there, actually.”

  “What sort of a tricky door?” asked Annabel, giving Blackfoot’s ears one last tickle.

  “Magic locks: huge ones. They’re snakes, and they’re pretty angry.”

  Annabel tilted her head to one side. “Why are they angry?”

  “That might have been my fault.”

  I wouldn’t believe it for a minute.

  “What did you do to it?” Annabel asked, gloomily unsurprised.

  “I let the tickerbox have a go at it,” said Peter. His voice became indignant. “They nearly crushed it, too! It only just managed to get through: I can hear it ticking away behind the door now. It wants to come back but I don’t think it dares.”

  “You’ve probably lost it, then,” said Annabel. “If your tickerbox can’t pick the lock, what can we do?”

  “Don’t be like that, Ann,” Peter said coaxingly. “We have to get it back. We might need it later.”

  Annabel sighed, and licked her damaged lips. “Might as well try, I suppose.”

  “Oh, here,” said Peter, poking her forehead with one finger to tilt her face. She couldn’t see what he was doing, but her mouth felt better at once, and even the cut across her cheek began to feel itchy. “I’ve sped up the natural healing. It’ll still be a bit sore and itchy, but it shouldn’t hurt as much.”

  Oh, well done, said Blackfoot, his voice particularly caustic. It only took you half an hour to realise that you should do something that took all of five seconds.

  “He can’t help it,” Annabel said excusingly. “He gets carried away when there’s something new to explore.”

  Blackfoot’s sarcastic comments didn’t stop, but they did sink into a vague, grumbling murmur at the back of her mind instead. They continued as Annabel followed Peter and his bobbing light, and only stopped when the light threw forward and glanced off brasswork at the end of the hall.

  Then he said: That’s a bit different to what I pictured.

  “Oh!” said Annabel, as close to cooing as she ever came. “Oh, aren’t they nice!”

  There was a hissing kind of silence as the brazen snakes unfurled themselves, all golden and soft and glowing in Peter’s magic light, then Peter and Blackfoot said at the same time: “What?”

  “I’m drawing them!” Annabel said, her fingers already groping for her pencil and her notebook. “They’re so smooth and glowy! Don’t do anything to them until I’ve finished, Peter!”

  “Do anything to them! Do anything to them?”

  Well done, Nan, said Blackfoot, sinking down on one of the flagstones and curling his tail around himself. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him so lost for words. Incidentally, since when have you had an affinity with snakes?

  “I’ve always loved snakes,” Annabel protested. “They’re so soft and pretty, and I had one when I was a baby.”

  “No, you didn’t,” Peter argued. “You couldn’t have! Grenna hates ’em, and even if your parents had loved ’em, who’s going to give a snake to their child?”

  “Well, I did,” said Annabel positively. “He was a little garter snake and he was green. He only bit me once, and that was because I accidentally stepped on his tail. I fed him crickets and grasshoppers.”

  “You’re not even drawing them right,” muttered Peter, evidently in an argumentative frame of mind. “You’re drawing them with their eyes closed.”

  “That’s how they were when I first saw them,” Annabel said, ignoring his rancour. She’d drawn one of the snakes with its eyes closed, its head curved beneath a coil of the other snake. The second, she’d drawn with its glowing eyes open just a slit, sleepy curiosity wakening like the embers of a fire. “They look nicer like that, anyway.”

  “Come on, Ann! We’ve got to rescue my tickerbox!”

  “You’re the one who did something stupid,” countered Annabel. “I don’t have to do anything. And I’m drawing.”

  “You’re always drawing; it’s boring. Look, even the snakes are falling asleep! Even the magical lock is falling asleep waiting for you to do something!”

  “Well, that’s all right, isn’t it?” Annabel said reasonably. “If they’re asleep, maybe we can unlock them before they wake up again.”

  “I’m not putting my hand near them again!”

  “I’ll do it,” Annabel said. “But I’m finishing my drawing first, so there. I want to remember how lovely they were.”

  “Ann–”

  “No,” said Annabel, her chin mulish.

  “What do you mean, no? I didn’t get to ask you anything.”

  “I’m not going to try anything until I’ve finished my drawing.”

  “You don’t know that’s what I was going to ask!”

  “All right,” said Annabel, without ceasing to shade the smooth scales of the second snake. “What were you going to ask me?”

  “Well,” said Peter, and stopped. There was a silence where Annabel’s scratching pencil was very loud, then Peter said: “Well, but do you have to draw all the time, Ann?”

  “Yes,” Annabel said. “I haven’t got perfect recall like some people. This is how I remember things.”

  “This is how you waste time when you don’t want to do something,” muttered Peter.

  Annabel only shrugged. It was true, after all. Moreover, she didn’t see why she should risk her limbs for Peter’s errant tickerbox. She was very fond of snakes, but she was also sensible enough not to get too close if she didn’t know whether or not one was poisonous.

  There was another scratching silence before Peter said sulkily: “But you like snakes, Ann!”

  As do I, remarked Blackfoot. They’re quite reasonably tasty if you can get past their infernal teeth. I tend to avoid ones that are big enough to swallow me whole, however. Nan, there is no earthly reason you should put yourself into danger to help an insensate piece of machinery.

  “I’m not sure it is insensate,” Annabel murmured. “It’s
one of Peter’s, after all.”

  “Of course it’s insensate,” said Peter moodily, catching on to the conversation. “It’s a machine, just cogs and gears and–”

  –a vast amount of undirected and uncannily powerful magic, said Blackfoot, in a loud aside. If it comes to that–

  “Oh, wait!” said Peter suddenly. “They’re– Nan, they really are going to sleep!”

  “Shhh, then!”

  Peter hissed: “No, but Nan! Their tails are dropping back into the slots: they were like that when I first saw them. When their tails are in those slots, the door is unlocked.”

  “Keep quiet, then. If they’re asleep by the time I finish my drawing, I’ll try to reach the doorknob.”

  She’d already seen their tails sinking into the slots, but it hadn’t occurred to her that it was all part of the lock. Annabel smudged a little with one finger, and began to draw the tails of her sketched snakes in their slots as well. The snake locks were already coiling wider as their tails settled, and through the coils she could see the two doorknobs. They hadn’t been visible before.

  Beside her, Peter bounced up and down in his impatience, but Annabel ignored him until she had finished shading around the tiny gleam in the eye of the second, almost sleeping, snake. It was a friendly gleam, she thought as she looked from her drawing to the door: the real snake had just the same one. She tucked away pencil and sketchbook, and said: “All right. Let’s go.”

  “Be careful, Ann,” Peter said anxiously. She heard the shuffle of his foot back and forth, then felt his warmth at her back. “They’re awfully fast!”

  Nan, I really think it’s better for you not to do this.

  “It’s all right,” she said, catching the final, friendly gleam in the second snake’s eyes just before they winked shut. She reached through the coils, careful not to touch the silken scales that curled around the doorknobs, and turned both doorknobs at once.

  Carefully does it, Nan. Don’t touch them.

  “I won’t,” sighed Annabel. She would very much have liked to touch them.

  “Won’t what?” Peter asked, sidling through the doors after her. He skirted around her back to keep as far from the snake locks as possible. Annabel didn’t blame him: she was quite sure that one of the second snake’s eyes had cracked open again, and that a glow of consideration was rimming the crack.