Blackfoot

by W. R. Gingell

  “So if we haven’t found a way to stop him within a day or two, there’s no hope?”

  “There’s a way,” said Rorkin. His eyebrow wasn’t twitching, which was a good sign, but Annabel didn’t like the apologetic way he was looking at her.

  “What way?”

  “Your pencil—the staff—it can draw a door out of the castle.”

  Annabel scrabbled for her pencil. “Why didn’t you tell me this before? I could have taken us all out of the castle before Mordion killed Peter’s mother!”

  “Killed his mother? Tosh. Even Mordion can’t interfere with certain threads in the time-line. He should know: he’s tried often enough.”

  “I saw it!”

  “Told you about seeing things,” pointed out Rorkin. “You’re going to have to learn to listen, your highness.”

  Wavering between two questions that had to be asked, Annabel finally chose the less confusing option, and asked: “What do you mean, I can draw a door out? Could we have been out of the castle a long time ago?”

  “You could,” Rorkin said. “That’s the problem. You can draw a door, but it will only work for you.”

  “Only for me?”

  “You. Just you. No one else.”

  “Why?”

  “That’s one of the fail-safes. The point is that you could get out by yourself. Safe. Whole. In one piece. From there, you could try to find a way to help your friends.”

  “What if I didn’t find a way? What good would it do to have me on the outside?”

  “You wouldn’t be dead. That’s an advantage.”

  “Don’t be stupid,” Annabel said angrily. “I couldn’t leave Blackfoot and Peter in here by themselves!”

  “Wouldn’t, not couldn’t,” said Rorkin. “All right. No need to be shrill about it. Then what will you do?”

  “Something,” said Annabel. “But not yet, because I have to make sure they’re safe first. Is Mordion really connected to the castle?”

  “Like a limpet to a log!” Rorkin said promptly.

  “Limpets don’t cling to logs.”

  “Him to the castle, the castle to him: there isn’t a lot of difference anymore. You couldn’t get him free if you were to poke him with a prybar.”

  “Good,” said Annabel.

  Rorkin looked doubtful. “I suppose you know what you’re talking about, but it seems like the opposite of good to me.”

  “Yes, that’s why I wasn’t sure at first. I’ll have to think about it again, just to be certain.”

  “Thinking is a good habit to get into,” agreed Rorkin. “Oh, are you going now?”

  “Yes,” said Annabel again. “I just wanted to be certain of a few things. Look, I’ve drawn you some more socks: they’re on the table. Don’t let Mordion get them.”

  She left Rorkin chuckling contentedly to himself with his new socks, and carefully let herself back into the throne room. Peter and Blackfoot were both still asleep, so Annabel sat down on the throne by way of a change, and thought.

  By the time Blackfoot began to stir, waking Peter with him, Annabel’s backside was sore and there was a warm red mark beneath her chin where she had leaned it on her fists.

  “We’ll have to get a cushion for this,” she muttered.

  “Ann,” mumbled Peter, looking around a little wildly. When he saw her, his face lost something of its wildness and grew almost vulnerable for the briefest moment. It was only for a moment: the next it was as hard as Annabel had ever seen it. “There you are,” he said. “I hope you’ve got your plan sorted out.”

  “Mostly,” Annabel said. “Do you still want to kill Mordion?”

  “If you won’t do it, I will.”

  “All right,” she said. “You promised–”

  “I promised not to do anything until today. What are you going to do?”

  “I need you to start up a spell for me in one of the lower rooms.”

  Peter’s eyes regarded her coldly. “What spell? And why the lower rooms?”

  “It’s closer to the black squishy stuff,” Annabel said, trying to look mysterious.

  “Why does that– oh, never mind. All right, let’s get started.”

  Nan, said Blackfoot curiously, what exactly are you up to?

  “We’re going to get rid of Mordion,” said Annabel. “Peter, you’ll have to lead the way so we don’t walk through any wrong doors. Take us as low as we can safely go: somewhere that was mostly already here before I started drawing.”

  I understand that. How are you planning on getting rid of him?

  “You’ll see,” Annabel told him, grateful for the first time that Peter and Blackfoot couldn’t communicate. Peter could be as sharp and short with her as it pleased him to pretend to be: she wasn’t taken in. He was just as determined to make sure that Annabel didn’t die as Annabel was to make sure he didn’t die. He would be planning on a spell of some sort to keep her out of the way while he went looking for Mordion, and if he and Blackfoot had been able to talk, Annabel knew they would have been planning together.

  The thing was, Annabel thought, her fingers wrapped tightly around her pencil, to make sure she was just a little bit quicker than Peter. Blackfoot was another matter entirely.

  Nan, I won’t be put off. How exactly do you plan on getting rid of Mordion? It may seem like a simple thing to you, but I assure you that Mordion has been the end of many a better prepared and stronger opponent than yourself.

  Without answering him, Annabel said to Peter: “Make sure you don’t get us to any rooms with snake-locks this time.”

  “I won’t,” Peter said, and though his voice only sounded irritated, Annabel couldn’t feel comfortable about him. He was holding together rather better than she’d expected, but she didn’t dare to tell him that she thought his mother might be alive, even if she thought so. Peter had a tendency to look and speak as though he were perfectly fine, right up until the moment that he collapsed. Like his sharp tongue, it was a mechanism that kept people as far away from him as Annabel’s blank face did from her.

  NAN.

  “Ow,” Annabel said, rubbing her ears.

  I refuse to be ignored!

  “Stop shouting,” she muttered at him.

  Peter, for once ignoring her asides to Blackfoot, led them through a doorway and down a spiral stairway that hadn’t been there the first time they travelled this way. There were three archways at the bottom of it.

  After a brief glance at all three Peter took the left-hand archway, saying over his shoulder: “Don’t touch the edges. I think Mordion’s trying to get to it, and he’ll probably know where we are if you do.”

  “Ugh,” said Annabel, and huddled her arms around herself. “Ow! Blackfoot! Don’t bite me!”

  “What’s wrong with your cat this morning, Ann?”

  “He doesn’t like being ignored.”

  “Oh. Look, will this do?”

  “Where are we?”

  “Beneath the throne room, I expect,” said Peter, shrugging. “I don’t know. Why can’t you pay more attention? I shouldn’t have to do everything for you.”

  “Is the doorway safe?”

  “I should think so,” Peter said, looking critically at it. “Unless it falls down from old age. I thought you drew all this back?”

  “I did, but I think it was already old and there was more of it left to start with. Can you make sure you check that there’s no other magic in the room? This room will only work if there’s nothing magical about it.”

  That makes no sense, Blackfoot said in annoyance, stalking into the room after Peter. Annabel felt a small smile soften the edges of her mouth: he had obviously decided that if she wasn’t going to tell him anything, he was going to figure it out for himself.

  “Nothing I can see,” said Peter, making a quick circuit of the room. “It’s safe to come in, Ann.”

  But Annabel, her pencil in hand and her sketchbook open, was already erasing the door from the inside of the room and drawing the wall back smoothly wh
ere it had been. For a moment she looked at the blank wall in front of her, and there was silence.

  “Ann?” That was Peter’s voice, sharp and cracking. “Ann, what have you done?”

  Annabel sat by the door that no longer opened on the inside and wrapped her arms around her knees. “I’ve drawn you in.”

  “You can’t– Ann, you can’t do that! We were going to– we have to get to Mordion!”

  “I’ll look after Mordion. It’s just that it’s not very safe.”

  Nan, let us out at once!

  “You can’t do that!”

  “Blackfoot,” called Annabel, “what spell has Peter been running for the last few minutes?”

  “Ann–”

  Something quiet and sleepy, came Blackfoot’s voice. Something that would have put you to sleep very nicely.

  “Blackfoot says you were trying to put me to sleep.”

  “Ann, you can’t go up there by yourself! What if you go through the wrong doorway?”

  “I’ll go back the way we came down. Don’t worry, Peter.”

  For the second time in as many days, Annabel heard Peter sob. This one, she was rather sure, was as angry as it was forlorn.

  “Ann, don’t you dare leave me in here with your cat!”

  “I promise,” said Annabel, “I promise I won’t die.”

  “You can’t promise that!”

  “Neither can you, and I’ve got a better chance than you do.”

  That’s no reason to go after Mordion by yourself, Nan!

  “It’s not the only reason,” Annabel said, but she said it quietly.

  “Let us out, Ann! We’ll go after Mordion together: open one of the doors into the place where he’s hiding. I won’t go after him alone, I promise!”

  “It’s no use your doing that, anyway,” said Annabel. “You can’t beat Mordion like that. Actually, you can’t beat him at all. You can’t–”

  His voice thick with grief and frustration, Peter snarled: “I know, I know! you’re the only one who can beat him!”

  “That’s right,” said Annabel. “So you need to stay here, nice and safe.”

  “I don’t want to be safe, Ann! You can’t run off to fight Mordion without magic!”

  “I can, actually. I won’t really be without magic: I have the pencil.”

  “You don’t even know how it works!”

  “No,” agreed Annabel, “but I’ve got a good idea, and I can’t look after you both if you’re there, so you have to stay here.”

  Nan, let me go at once!

  “No,” said Annabel. “I told you: you can’t come with me. I don’t know how to look after you.”

  There was an almost wordless howl around the edges of her mind that sounded like Not again! before Blackfoot said icily: If even the boy thinks it’s a bad idea for you to go alone, it’s time to rethink your opinion.

  “I’ve already rethought it,” said Annabel. “And every time I think about it, it comes out the same way. I know—I think I know—how to beat Mordion, but I don’t know how to keep you safe, and if he takes you and your magic as well–”

  That’s not your decision to make, Blackfoot hissed.

  “It is my decision, you know,” Annabel said.

  “Your decision?” Peter spluttered. “What rubbish!”

  Blackfoot, more sedately, said, How so?

  “Oh, that.” Annabel cleared her throat. Awkwardly, she added: “I’m the heir. You know, the one the castle is looking for?”

  There was a very distinct silence from Blackfoot, but Peter gave a rude snort of laughter. “As if we didn’t know that!”

  “What? How did you know?”

  “How do you not know?” Peter said in disgust. “Ann, do you even pay attention at school? The castle has been coming back ever since we got here, and it never occurred to you?”

  “Anyway, that’s why,” Annabel said. “It’s my decision, and I’m not going to let you out, so you might as well stop trying to get out.”

  There was another brief silence before Peter said cautiously: “How did you know I’m trying to get out?”

  It doesn’t take a great deal of mental ability to know that.

  “What else would you be doing?” Annabel said, more kindly. She had expected Peter to use his formidable powers of magic to get out of the room: it was why she was currently drawing walls around it just as she’d done to the black squishy stuff, keeping the edges of the paper blank. If everything went well, Mordion was going to be too busy to sniff around the room.

  “Yes, but why should you go alone, Ann? I know it’s not much good my going by myself, but won’t it be better if we all go? I might not be able to beat Mordion, but I’ll be able to singe his eyebrows a bit, after all.”

  “Maybe, but he’d do more than singe your eyebrows. It’s no good arguing, Peter. I’m not going to let you out. And– and I’m going away now, so it’s no use arguing. I won’t be able to hear you.”

  She left them both behind, Peter yelling at the wall and Blackfoot howling in the back of her mind, and went back through the castle alone. Peter’s shouts faded from earshot first, and her footsteps echoed more loudly against the castle walls than she was used to hearing. When Blackfoot’s voice also began to wane, the silence in her mind echoed even more loudly than her footsteps, and Annabel was glad to come out into the sunny courtyard outside.

  She sat in the sun for a little while with her pencil and notebook still clutched to her chest. It was no good starting just now: she would have to wait until tomorrow, when Rorkin had said that Mordion would have control of the entire castle. So Annabel sat in the courtyard, plump and silent and sturdy, and waited.

  The next morning broke early and cold. Annabel didn’t mind: it meant she had a reason for the shivers that wouldn’t stop. Despite the shivers, she was quite certain of her plan, and that was an odd feeling. Spending so much time with Peter, Annabel had naturally grown used to being often contradicted– and almost as often, proved wrong. It hadn’t made her any less sure of her opinions than she had been by nature, but it had made her less precious about them.

  Peter couldn’t argue this time, but had he been able to argue until he was blue in the face, Annabel knew she wouldn’t have faltered. If Rorkin had made himself so much a part of the castle that anything affecting it affected him, then Mordion, in taking over the castle, had made the same mistake. Rorkin had given her the answer without meaning to do: erasing the castle was the only way that Mordion could be defeated. Like Rorkin, Mordion had committed too much of himself to the castle, and while it gave him a great deal of power it was also his weakness.

  Annabel didn’t eat breakfast that morning. She was too busy thinking about what she had to do, and what the consequences would be. The biggest consequence of erasing the castle was Rorkin, and that consequence was a hard one to swallow. She’d been meaning to draw him back in properly, erasing away the safe space of doorless walls that she’d drawn around him. Now she was glad she hadn’t.

  It was a rather horrible feeling, being glad that Rorkin was trapped like soap in a box and unable to do anything to help himself– unable to slide away like the slippery thing he was. It was this feeling that made Annabel reluctantly draw herself into his rooms again instead of simply leaving him there while she did what she had to do, erasing all traces of the castle and Rorkin together.

  “Hallo,” said Rorkin’s voice sadly as the door went from a sketchy kind of existence into a solidly realistic one beneath her fingers.

  “Your window’s gone,” Annabel said scratchily, clearing her throat.

  Rorkin smiled at her, and that was sad, too. “The castle isn’t responding to me anymore.”

  “No. I think Mordion is controlling every bit of it except this room and the one Blackfoot and Peter are in.”

  “Did you draw them in?”

  “Yes,” said Annabel. “They wouldn’t stay in there by themselves, so I had to draw them in. They wanted to come with me.”

  �
��Good, good, good,” said Rorkin. His brown eyes were very bright, and very understanding. Annabel knew she didn’t really have to explain it all to him—that he already knew what she was planning—but that would have been the easy way out. “Then this is goodbye?”

  Annabel nodded with a tightly knotted throat. “Yes.”

  “What will you do?”

  “Erase it all,” Annabel said. “You said– well, you said you’re connected with the castle.”

  “That’s right: erase the castle, and I’ll vanish too. This is the only way, I suppose?”

  “Yes.” Annabel felt the tight hotness of tears at the corners of her eyes, and cleared her throat. She said: “Blackfoot and Peter– they’re mine, you see, and with Mordion out there it’s either them or you. And if he gets out of the castle…”

  “I’m so sorry,” said Rorkin, and this time Annabel knew he really was sorry. “I didn’t think you’d have to start being Queen quite so early. I’ll be all right, you know. Won’t know anything about it.”

  Annabel nodded. “I’d try to draw you back, but Mordion will still be in here somewhere. I can’t draw you back if he’s just going to come back with the castle.”

  “Yes,” agreed Rorkin. “Bit of a puzzle, isn’t it? What a pity: I would have liked to be there when you’re crowned.”

  “Aren’t you afraid I’ll turn into a ruler like the Red Queen? She must have started somewhere, after all.”

  “No,” said Rorkin. “I can see your hand shaking, and your face has gone all red. So long as you can still cry about the awful decisions that have to be made, you’ll be all right.”

  “I don’t want to be Queen,” said Annabel.

  “I didn’t want to be a wizard, if it comes to that. Nearly killed my little brother when I was a child. Power doesn’t strengthen family ties at all, you know.”

  “So there’s really no choice?”

  “There’s always a choice. Some of them are bad choices, and some of them are hard choices, but they’re there.”

  Annabel stared at him. “That’s not what you said before. You said there was no choice.”

  “Didn’t, you know,” said Rorkin. “Said it was no use running away from it. You could try running to something.”