by Garth Nix
Behind her The Evil locomotive grew its last piston-leg. It rose up and opened its terrible jaws to reveal the firebox still burning within.
‘Now it has tossed me aside and left me to die. I want to make amends. It is the only way I can make up for the mistakes I’ve made.’
Jaide looked at the locomotive. They only had seconds before it charged.
‘What if we trust you and you betray us?’
‘Please let me! I failed to protect my children, so let me protect you, this town, the people . . . give me a reason to live.’
‘We don’t know how,’ said Jaide uncertainly.
The locomotive vented steam in an unholy scream that sent ripples flying across the lake. With it came the return of The Evil’s mental voice.
++What are you doing?++
Rennie stiffened. A fleck of white appeared in her eyes.
‘Now!’ she whispered. ‘Now!’
The locomotive shuddered forward and struck rubble. It backed up, moving ponderously on its steely legs. Then it rammed forward, exploding the fallen rocks, but not quite all of them. Not enough so it could pass. It backed up again, snorting and steaming.
Jack and Jaide took what remained of Rennie’s right hand.
‘Rennie,’ said Jaide.
‘Renita Daniels,’ corrected Jack.
‘Renita Cassidy Daniels,’ Rennie whispered.
‘ . . . be the Living Ward of Portland,’ the twins said in unison.
Rainbow-hued light flared between them. Rennie’s back arched and her mouth opened in a silent cry. Jack and Jaide shook as their Gifts were ripped from them in a wild, sudden rush. They had forgotten that the creation of a new ward would temporarily rob them of their powers.
Even as what made them troubletwisters rushed into Rennie, making her into the Living Ward, The Evil fought back. The whiteness was spreading in her eyes and the locomotive was smashing against the fallen rocks.
‘Come on, Rennie!’ Jaide cried.
Jack gripped her hand more tightly than ever. ‘Don’t give in!’
Tara joined in, unflinchingly reaching out to touch her palm to the side of Rennie’s ruined face.
‘Please,’ she said. ‘You’re a mum. We’re kids. We need you.’
The white vanished from Rennie’s eyes in an instant and the black tears became clear. She smiled, and her eyelids slowly closed.
The Living Ward was restored. Portland was safe again.
The locomotive, reversing for its final charge, kept going and rammed backwards into the tunnel beyond the cave. Its boiler burst, and red-hot coals exploded out of its firebox, falling like a shower of meteorites.
++No! Come back to us, be one with us, forever . . . !++
The mental voice of The Evil faded and then was gone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Smoke and Mirrors
A few seconds later, the shining forms of the Wardens returned. Four of them bent over Rennie and laid down a cloth of something so white that the twins and Tara couldn’t bear to see it and had to look away.
When they looked back, Rennie and the four shining figures were gone.
++Quickly,++ said Grandma X’s voice. ++There is little time.++
The twins turned to see her sylphlike, youthful form standing directly behind them.
‘Are you a ghost?’ asked Tara.
‘Where did Rennie go?’ asked Jaide at the same time.
++No, I’m not a ghost,++ replied Grandma X. ++Rennie has been taken somewhere where we will heal her, at least as much as we can. But right now you all must listen very closely. Emergency services are on their way.++
‘Uh-oh,’ Jack said.
‘Mum!’ exclaimed Jaide.
++Yes, your mother, among many others. We must get you out of the cave before she arrives.++
Two more shining figures appeared next to her. One was Custer, in human shape, and the other was Aleksandr.
++We must act fast to seal up the cave again,++ said Custer. ++And restore the locomotive pieces to a more usual form. You children need to get out now.++
Jack nodded.
++Tara,++ said Aleksandr. ++One moment. Jack, stand next to her, please.++
Tara turned to look at the Warden. Something flashed in his hand and she went limp for a moment, and would have fallen if Jack hadn’t propped her up.
++She will remember nothing of what transpired here,++ he said. ++You must not remind her.++
‘But she was part of it,’ said Jaide. ‘We couldn’t have done it without her.’
++You may talk of the crash, but not what followed. She saw too much. It would do her no good to remember.++
He waved his hand, and Tara followed the gesture like a puppet, heading towards the hole in the cave wall.
Ari and Kleo appeared, no longer looking quite so worse for wear.
‘We must follow,’ Kleo said. ‘The Gathering is going to work their magic, and they wish you well away before they start.’
‘I get it,’ Jack said. ‘In case our Gifts make things go wrong.’
He set out after Tara and the spirit of Aleksandr, his hands shoved deep into his pockets.
Jaide followed, but paused as she saw a bedraggled, white-furred body in the rubble. Amadeus had no visible wounds, but he was clearly dead. He appeared to have died from shock.
‘Poor Amadeus,’ said Kleo. She licked the top of his head, in a final farewell.
‘What happened to the other train cats?’ she asked.
‘Most ran away,’ said Ari. ‘We’ll just go and make sure that all of them did so.’
‘Good.’
‘Would you carry Amadeus for me?’ Kleo asked Jaide. ‘He should be properly buried, not left here like this. He was not always as you saw him.’
Ari sniffed, stifling it suddenly as Kleo looked at him.
‘All right,’ said Jaide, swallowing a flash of mixed sympathy and revulsion. She put her hands under the dead cat and, with one quick movement, picked him up.
++Hurry!++ called out Aleksandr, turning back to the cave. ++Out through the tunnel!++
The twins ran to him, took Tara by one arm each and led her out into the night air.
‘Along here,’ said Kleo, guiding them across the tangled tracks and past the passenger carriage, which was only half off the railway tracks.
Behind them, with the sound of a great stone door slamming shut, the cave was once again sealed off from the tunnel.
Sirens approached. Two police cars, one fire engine and an ambulance screeched round the corner into the station car park. Jack shielded his eyes from the bright lights.
A car door slammed and Susan almost catapulted out of her seat and was with the children in an instant.
‘Jack? Jaide? What on earth are you doing here?’
Before they could even begin to answer, she gathered them into a frantic hug, then pushed them back to peer at their filthy faces, looking for blood, bruises, broken bones and possibly worse things the twins couldn’t imagine.
‘We were on the train, Mum,’ Jack told her. ‘But it’s OK. We’re all right.’
‘Are you sure? Your face is scratched,’ she said to Jaide.
‘It doesn’t hurt,’ she said, and indeed it didn’t. After everything that had happened, she had completely forgotten about it.
‘And you, Tara? You poor girl. Look at me.’
Susan swung Tara round so the light caught her full in her face.
‘Uh, what?’ she said, as though waking from a deep dream. ‘Where am I?’
Susan held her face and looked into her eyes.
‘No obvious sign of concussion,’ she said. ‘But I think we’d better take her in for a full check-up. Just sit down here, Tara, for a few minutes.’
She turned back to the ambulance and raised her hand above her head.
‘Hobo, stretcher!’
‘I’ll take the twins home,’ said Grandma X, the real, physical Grandma X, coming forward out of the light. ‘You have work to do.’
There was something in her voice that made the professionally repressed fear in Susan’s eyes fade. She looked the twins over again, then nodded.
‘In a moment. Do you two know if there was anyone else on the train?’
‘We were the only passengers,’ replied Jaide. ‘There was a conductor . . .’
‘OK,’ said Susan. ‘Well done.’
She kissed the twins and gave them another hug each.
‘Call me if you feel any pain developing, headaches or stiffness in the neck. Anything out of the ordinary. And clean those scratches up. I will be back as soon as I can.’
‘We will,’ promised Jack and Jaide. Tara smiled dreamily and yawned.
‘Just when I thought Portland had gone quiet again,’ muttered Susan.
Another paramedic trundled a stretcher up, and he and Susan bent down over Tara again, Susan shining her penlight into Tara’s eyes. Other emergency workers were picking through the wreckage, looking for anyone else who might have been injured.
‘They already found the driver,’ said Grandma X as she led the twins to the idling Hillman Minx. ‘He broke a leg, but he’s fine.’
‘What about the conductor?’
‘He was unconscious through the whole thing. Custer made him comfortable, and the paramedics will find him in a minute or two.’
‘He’ll forget too, won’t he?’ asked Jack.
‘People always forget what they don’t want to remember.’
‘Especially if they’re helped,’ added Jaide.
Jack thought of the old Living Ward, and the stories of monsters that had leaked out despite how secretive it had been.
‘But where there’s fire, there’s smoke, right?’
Grandma X put a finger to her lips.
They got into the car, Jack and Jaide together in the back.
‘Poor Rennie,’ said Jaide. ‘Just think of everything she went through.’
‘And now she’s the Living Ward,’ said Jack. ‘I mean, how’s that going to work out for her?’
‘Very well, I imagine,’ said Grandma X. ‘It will give her a vital purpose to live, something that she had lost and never thought to find again. She will not be a builder again though, I fear. Phanindranath is a wonderful healer, and a fine . . . ah . . . mundane surgeon, but even a Warden cannot replace a missing hand.’
Jack was about to ask a question about what a Warden healer could do when they were suddenly beeped from behind, by a van that also flashed its lights to high beam.
‘Ah, that will be Mr McAndrew,’ said Grandma X. ‘We are so close to home I think he can meet us there.’
When they arrived at Watchward Lane, Martin McAndrew’s van pulled up behind them. He jumped out and ran to the car, desperately peering through the windows to see his daughter, who wasn’t there.
Grandma X wound down the window. She spoke at the same time as he did, their words overlapping.
‘Tara!? Where’s Tara? I’ll never forgive myself –’
‘Tara is perfectly fine, Mr McAndrew,’ said Grandma X.
‘But where she is?’
‘She is perfectly fine,’ repeated Grandma X sternly. ‘However, she has been taken to the hospital to be absolutely sure.’
‘Perfectly fine,’ echoed McAndrew. ‘At the hospital. Uh, thank you. Thank you.’
He turned to run back to his van, stopped, spun round and leaned in through the window to attempt to give Grandma X a clumsy hug.
‘Thank you,’ he said, with a kind of dazed expression. ‘If you say she’s perfectly fine . . . she must be . . .’
‘Indeed,’ said Grandma X, gently pushing his hugging arm back with one long finger. ‘Off you go.’
‘Yes,’ muttered McAndrew as he backed away. ‘To the hospital. Perfectly fine. Perfectly fine.’
‘I wonder if this will make him think more about his family,’ said Grandma X as she climbed out of the car. ‘Come along, troubletwisters.’
Grandma X took Amadeus’s body from Jaide and led them back inside. The twins’ heads were whirling with their new understanding of recent events.
‘So there weren’t any vandals next door. It was actually the Living Ward coming and going,’ said Jaide, ‘except for that day we were locked out because you had it here while the excision was next door, watching us?’
‘And that needle you were looking for was to stitch up the Living Ward’s wounds,’ said Jack. ‘And what I saw you washing that day was bandages, not clothes?’
‘And the snake skin we saw was left by the monster as it healed from the first attack?’
‘All correct,’ said Grandma X. ‘I kept the ward in the cellar next door, and was careful to replace the cobwebs when I was done. There wasn’t time to repair the damage, though, before Martin discovered it.’
‘I guess that’s why Mum has been so sleepy lately too,’ said Jaide, adding one more secret secret to the list. ‘You’ve been knocking her out to stop her hearing anything in the night – such as the monster when it was hurt.’
‘True.’
‘But why do you and all the other Wardens look so young when you appear as spirits?’ Jack asked, thinking more generally.
‘We appear exactly as we did when we became Wardens,’ said Grandma X, ‘for that is the day we attained our true selves.’
‘So we’ll be like that too, one day?’
‘Yes, Jaidith.’
‘But why?’
‘I’m afraid that’s one of the mysteries, Jackaran.’
‘Almost everything is a mystery,’ Jack complained.
‘True,’ said Grandma X. ‘I am pleased that you realise it. Now go and wash.’
They trudged upstairs and took turns in the shower. When they came out, Grandma X painted bright yellow ointment on Jaide’s scratches, which made them sting anew. Neither of them was hungry, but, remembering Custer’s advice about taking sustenance after using their Gifts, they forced down some leftovers for dinner.
By the time that was done they were both practically nodding off at the table.
‘Your mother could be hours yet,’ said Grandma X. ‘Do you want to go to bed or lie down in the living room and wait for her there?’
‘Down here,’ said Jaide.
‘All right. You go on in and I’ll get some pillows and blankets.’
The twins stretched out in their own very different fashions. Jaide lay on the room’s only couch, and Jack curled up on the floor with his back against the base of the couch, studying the pattern on the carpet. Like so many other decorations in the house, it featured a four-pointed motif, not unlike a compass.
‘What ward was the Living Ward?’ he asked Grandma X when she returned. ‘South or West?’
‘West, Jackaran.’
‘And what was it? The monster, I mean. Where did it come from?’
‘It was a pet.’
‘A what?’
‘The previous Warden of Portland kept an axolotl. It was much smaller then of course. Becoming a Living Ward initiates change, though it is not always physical. It is similar, though more pronounced, to the way inanimate things take on special characteristics when they’re around Wardens. This is also true of some living things. Companions, for example. I think you’ve noticed this too, in recent days. Although perhaps in ways you’d rather not.’
Jack puzzled over this for a second, then remembered. ‘The insects? I thought that was The Evil . . . the excision –’
‘They are drawn to your Gift as moths are to a candle, with similar results. It’s not your fault. It may extend beyond insects too. You might find animals acting oddly around you in the coming weeks as your Gift settles – but they won’t die. Only the tiniest minds are completely overcome by the power we possess.’
Jack thought of Fi-Fi the dog and was glad. Imagine if he’d patted her and she’d dropped dead!
‘Now shush,’ she said. ‘Your sister is already asleep.’
Jack sat up to look. Jaide’s eyes were indeed tightly shut. Gr
andma X laid a blanket over her and put a pillow by her, in case she woke up and looked for one. Then she gave Jack the same, and he arranged himself back down again, resting his head more comfortably against down and cotton.
Grandma X crouched next to him and brushed a lock of brown hair from his forehead.
‘You look just like your father did when he was a boy,’ she said. ‘So serious. What are you thinking about, Jackaran?’
He hadn’t known he was thinking of anything, but it was there in his mind when he looked.
‘What did The Evil mean when it said “One always falls”?’ he asked.
‘It said that, did it?’
‘Yes, and I suppose it’s one of the mysteries, too . . .’
‘No, it’s not a mystery, but it is something I hope you won’t need to learn about for a good while yet.’ She smiled. ‘No more questions now. You’ve earned a rest, don’t you think?’
Jack nodded, even though she had blatantly dodged his question. He was tired, and they had saved Portland for the second time in a month.
‘Yes,’ he mumbled. ‘I reckon we have.’
Young Master Rourke sat upright in his armchair, startled awake by a sudden noise. Despite his name, he was actually an old man, only a few days short of his eighty-fifth birthday. He was known as ‘Young Master Rourke’ because his father had been the one and only ‘Mister Rourke’ in the area for many, many years. Old Mister Rourke had built Rourke Castle, he had bought up all the railways and shipping lines and the whaling stations for miles around, and in doing so he had become one of the richest and most influential men of his time.
All those railways, the ships and most of the riches were now gone, but Young Master Rourke still owned Rourke Castle. A vast, rambling palace that extended across two sides of a hill, it had towers and stables and three ballrooms, a Greek temple, a Venetian canal and a scale copy of an Egyptian pyramid that was a hundred feet high (it looked like stone on the outside but was in fact hollow, made of concrete slabs over a steel beam skeleton).
Rourke Castle was so big that it was spread across two territories. Half was within the bounds of a small town called Portland, the other half in Portland County. When the castle had still had staff, they’d used to joke about going to town, or going to the country, when crossing from one side of the castle to the other.
