by Amy Wilson
I pull myself up and peer out of the window now, watching him disappear out of sight. Not so much magical, more like elusive and distracted. He says he does it to get to the university fresh and early, before anybody else is there to bother him. It’s his routine. Even at weekends, off he goes at full charge. I have wondered, sometimes, if it’s to get away from me, if I remind him so much of Mum that he can’t bear to look at me too much. Now I wonder if he’s still searching for her.
Maybe he never stopped thinking of her. I know the rest of the town hasn’t; they loved the ground she walked on, and they still do. All the shopkeepers, Mrs Pick the librarian, the lollipop man, all of them have stories to tell about her contagious wicked laughter, the way birds gathered in the trees when she was near, the way her song rippled through the streets and made the day shine brighter. The way they tell it, she became the heart of the whole place.
And then she left us all.
The white house flashes in front of my eyes. That’s where the answers are. I pull myself out of bed, shove my clothes on and rush out of the flat with a biscuit in my mouth and the book in my jacket pocket. I race past the bus stop where Dylan and I saw each other just yesterday and run down all the familiar streets, jumping down the worn old stone steps by the church. My heart is racing, it’s singing with wanting to get into that house and get Dylan out of there.
I skid round the corner, breath bursting out.
The house isn’t there.
I cannot sleep.
I’ve suffered this for so long: dreamless slumber, broken only by waking to this living nightmare that’s impossible to understand. How did I get here? How is it possible to be trapped in glass? The sky overhead is an unchanging solid mass of pale grey; behind me, the hill with that forsaken house. If I stare beyond the glass at a particular angle, there’s a whole different reality: a vast room full of shelves where worlds as bleak as mine are stacked.
Sometimes Io stalks through this place, bringing her storms with her, so that I cannot stand straight. Sometimes in the sky of that larger world out there, where Ganymede wears her loneliness like a second skin, I can see stars. For a while, I wished on them: I wished for school, I wished for home, I wished for the most boring things I could think of. I would do homework for a hundred years just to be able to eat toast while I did it, and I would never use magic again. Not ever.
I stopped wishing a long time ago. Stopped thinking, remembering, stopped the bargaining. Then the dog came. I’d never so much as stroked a dog before, and for a while we skirted around each other. And then he moved closer. He snorted his breath into my face, and it stank, and it was real – it was warm. I called him Helios because it means ‘the sun’, and I leaned into him, and he was really, truly there. We spend our moments together now, facing this way or that. Sometimes we try to climb the hill. Sometimes I howl, and sometimes he barks, but that’s OK, because we understand each other.
Now we are thrown into chaos, and we can’t rest, because Clementine was here. Of all the people, Clementine. How can I ask her for help?
I should have said sorry. Sorry I didn’t stop him. Sorry I hid behind Jago, watching while the magic we both have danced in her eyes, while I buried mine deep down so nobody would ever know.
But I didn’t. I didn’t even think of it. And now she’s gone, and I don’t know if she’ll ever come back again. Why would she come back into this place and risk everything, for me?
‘No,’ I whisper.
NO!
It isn’t there. I approach the same spot from every angle, walk around in circles, look for it out of the corner of my eye, run at it as if I can surprise it into being. But the place where the house stood is just an old, dilapidated park. I pace for hours and then slump on to the bench, curling the book in my hand, staring into emptiness until my eyes water, until my bum is numb with cold and my feet have lost all their feeling. I’ve checked to see if my mother wrote anything about seeing through Ganymede’s hiding spell, but there was nothing; I could barely see straight. I call on every emotion I’ve ever felt, hoping to awaken some sort of magic that will reveal the house to me, flex my fingers to see if I can make a spark, but nothing happens, and all the time I’m calling to Dylan in my mind, hoping just maybe he’ll hear me.
I came back! Dylan!
Nothing. Not a glimmer of marble, not a spark, or a wink of anything resembling that bewitching place.
Was it a dream?
‘Clementine?’
I start, looking up to see Pa coming towards me, a frown on his face.
‘What are you doing sitting here in the cold?’
‘I needed some air. What are you doing here?’
He looks from me to the playground, his eyes a bit wild. ‘I was heading home to make us some lunch. Why are you here, though? Did you see something?’
‘I thought I did, yesterday.’
‘What was it, Clem? Do you see it now?’ He steps closer to the old iron railings, puts his hand on the cold metal.
It wasn’t a dream. He knows about the house.
‘It’s gone,’ I say heavily, staring at him as old memories stir in my mind. Memories of coming here with him in the early morning, when I was small. Of sitting on this very bench eating pastries, while the sun made the rooftops gleam. Has he really just been waiting for her this whole time?
‘Pa . . .’
‘You saw the house?’ He looks back to me, his tired brown eyes gleaming. ‘Did you see it? Did you go in, Clem? Was anybody there?’
‘Like who?’
‘It was your mother’s house. She was living there with her sisters when I met her . . . What did you see, Clem?’ He comes and perches next to me on the bench, his eyes still flitting from me to the place where the house was before. ‘Tell me everything.’
‘There were thousands of snowglobes,’ I say. ‘They were all whirling; the house was full of them. It was cold, and bright, and it smelt of dust . . . and I ran away, before I should have. And I came back, but now it’s gone.’
‘This is where I first saw her, here, at dawn, when all the birds were singing,’ he says, staring at the hard packed earth of the old park, the scrubby grass, the rusted metal slide. ‘I was restless, walking, and there she was, in the most incredible garden . . .’ He looks at me. ‘Did you see the garden?’
‘Yes.’ I don’t tell him that it’s a ruin now, all shadows and thorns.
‘And you went in?’ He frowns. ‘It wasn’t wise, Clem. You can’t just go wandering into strange old houses. It’s a dangerous place.’
‘I got out again,’ I say. ‘And now I can’t even see it, so it’s not too much of a danger, is it?’ I can’t help the snap in my voice. I’ve wondered about my mother for a lifetime. We talked about her magic, all the joy she brought, and I knew she was special, but I never knew about a magical hiding house. He never told me she had sisters. And now it’s all gone again, before I even had a chance to find out more.
‘Let’s go home,’ he says, his face tightening.
He stands and looks down at me, and I fold my arms, feeling all small and prickly.
‘I don’t want to.’
‘Pardon?’
‘I’m going to stay here until it’s back. I want to go in again.’
‘No you’re not,’ he says, his tone hardening. ‘You look like you’ve been here all morning; you’re nearly blue with cold. Get up, Clem. I’m not leaving you here.’
He starts to walk away, as if I’m just going to follow, as if it isn’t even a question.
‘I met Ganymede!’ I shout after him, standing up.
He turns, his face drained of colour.
‘What?’
‘Yep. I met her.’ I fold my arms. ‘My aunt.’
‘What were you thinking, going into that place all alone?’ he shouts after an awful moment of silence, only broken by the sound of shop awnings being opened for the day. I can smell fresh bread, hear the rumble of a bus engine in the distance. My stomach sours as he glare
s at me. I’ve never seen him in such a temper. ‘And now you’re back for more? You have no idea what you’re walking into, Clem. I forbid this! Home, now!’ He gestures in the vague direction of our flat, his breath steaming in the bitter air.
‘No! You can’t forbid me! Don’t you want me to find out what happened? I know you never stopped looking for her, Pa!’ My face is hot, my hands shaking – I don’t know what’s happening. We don’t fall out, me and my pa; we’re all we have. We laugh together at old films, we make our own popcorn and on Sundays we go for brunch at the old cafe on the bridge, and watch people pass by out of the wide, dusty windows. We don’t shout at each other in the street. Except today we do. Today we stand and glare at each other, arms folded, and my heart is hammering so hard I can hardly see straight.
‘I am not discussing this here,’ he says finally, his eyes flicking to the empty space where we both know the house still stands. ‘Walk home with me, and we can talk.’ He takes a deep breath. ‘Please, Clementine. Now.’
He isn’t going to leave without me. And while he’s here the house isn’t going to appear. It’s clear it’s been hiding from him all this time. Ganymede has been hiding it from him. Maybe it was my magic that broke through her spell yesterday. Maybe she’s hiding it even harder now.
‘OK,’ I whisper.
I’LL BE BACK! I shout it as loud as I can in my mind, just hoping Dylan will hear me. Because, whatever Pa says, this is not where this ends.
I am only just beginning.
‘I’m sorry for shouting,’ Pa says in a low voice as soon as we’re away from the square. ‘I know you need answers, but I don’t think that’s the place to find them.’ He glances at me.
The low sun flashes through the gaps between buildings and makes my eyes burn.
‘I don’t know why she didn’t come back that day. We had an argument, but it was nothing; we were just tired. We’d run out of milk –’ he sighs – ‘and she went out to get some air, and she just didn’t come home. I always wondered if she’d gone back to the house, if something had happened there, but I couldn’t find it. It just wasn’t there. It’s been a long time now, Clem, and your mother was a powerful, resourceful woman. If she’d wanted to be found, I’d have found her.’
It sounds more like a question than a statement. He doesn’t know anything, I realize. He couldn’t find her himself, and now he wants to stop me, just when there’s a chance.
‘So, what, I’m not even supposed to look? You want me just to forget about it?’
‘Yes! Yes, that’s what I want.’ He stops, puts his hands on my shoulders. ‘You have magic, Clem; we both knew you’d have it. And I know it hurts, that there are no clear answers; I know you lost her just as much as I did, maybe even more. But there are no good things in that house! Your mother left it for a reason, and I don’t trust anything you might find there. We’ll find our way together. I’ll help you. There must be more books – we can learn about your magic so that you can manage it. But you cannot go back there. Ganymede is dangerous – the whole place is.’
‘But she’s my aunt, isn’t she? So I can talk to her . . .’
‘No,’ he says, moving back. ‘No, you mustn’t. She may be your aunt, but who knows what she is capable of? Your mother never even told them she’d had a child. She wanted to protect you from it all, and that’s what I’ll do, Clem, till my dying day. If Ganymede is drawing you here . . . we should have moved away. I won’t lose you to that place too.’ His face darkens. ‘Come on –’ he storms ahead – ‘lunch. And I’ll think about what we’re going to do next.’
I have a thousand retorts on my tongue, and a thousand more questions, but they’re all wedged deep inside me. I force my feet after his, my mind whirring. Magic, and school suspension, the book and the house. Dylan in a globe. Now Pa seems to be saying we should move somewhere else, just to get away from the house.
That’s not happening.
He’s wrong about it all. He thinks there’s a way for me to just walk away. He doesn’t know about Dylan, or all the magicians trapped in there. He doesn’t know that the one promise I’ve made to myself is that I would never just abandon the people who need me most.
Never.
He keeps darting me concerned looks, so I hold my chin up and try to keep the fire out of my eyes, but already I am scheming. Already I am halfway there.
Lunch is all silence and swallowing, the crusts on the bread are too hard, and I feel cold. Everything is different, and I can hardly look at Pa, who paces and frets because he has to go back to work after lunch.
‘We can talk more –’ he kisses the top of my head while I push cheese gratings around my plate – ‘when I’m home later. We can order Chinese, and we can talk all night, Clem, but you have to promise you won’t go back there. Not today, not until we’ve talked. Can you promise?’
I promise with my fingers crossed, and my blood prickles in my veins when I do it, so I know just how wrong it is, but I do it anyway. My mouth is dry, and our smiles are thin, and it’s a relief when he’s gone. I clear the table, clean it until it shines, and get my mother’s book out again, studying the sketch and trying to build a solid picture in my mind, hoping that will help when I get there. I do a bit of hoovering and leave the vacuum cleaner poking out of the cupboard so Pa can tell, squirt a bit of polish about, and upend a folder of paper over my bed so it looks like I’ve been studying.
And then I head out, leaving a note for Pa, telling him I’m going to catch up on schoolwork with Lizzie, that I’ll be back by nine, and we can talk then.
Lizzie was my best friend at primary school. We don’t see each other any more; she has new friends now. Pa doesn’t know that bit. We were pretty good together once, before it all went wrong.
It was the summer before we started secondary school, my eleventh birthday. She came over to watch films and eat pizza, but the film was about this mother and daughter, and the mother died, and when the daughter cried, so did I, and Lizzie moved closer and put her arm round me. But when she looked closer, she turned pale and scrambled away from me.
‘What is it?’ I asked, wiping tears from my cheeks with my fingers.
‘Your eyes!’
I stood up, looked in the mirror. My brown irises were flickering, flashing shards of amber.
‘I have to go,’ she said, but I hardly heard her – my heart was hammering too loud.
And we never spoke after that; I don’t think either of us knew what to say. Pa said it would be OK. He taught me to count when the feeling flared, and I told myself it was just a one-time thing. I never felt it happen again.
Jago saw it somehow, though. On that first day, when he said my eyes were weird, I’d rushed to the loo to check. They were fine, but he’d seen something there. Maybe just a flash. I counted harder after that.
Anyway, I don’t go to Lizzie’s house – I haven’t been there for over a year. Instead I head back into town, walking slower this time, as if I can creep up on it. It’s dusk, but the moon is nowhere to be seen, and clouds sit heavy over the town. I start down the winding street towards the bakery and the bench, and snow starts to fall, which feels like hope, somehow. I look at the ground and watch the icy flakes dissolve into the gaps between cobbles and wish as hard as I can, please, until static makes my hair fly up around my head. Then I look up, and my heart sings, because it’s here, looming over me, white as milk, almost glowing against the gloom, the tower cutting through the clouds.
I clench my fists and stride out across the square, and I never take my eyes off it, not for an instant. I just keep going: through the gate, up the steps, past all the tangled vines and clutching branches. I plant my feet firm and I charge up until I’m at the wide door that feels like warm skin. I brace myself, spread my hands and push against it.
The door swings open. Holding my breath, I step through and close it behind me, my eyes searching the spinning air for my moth-whirl of an aunt. There is no sign, and, for now, the shadowed corners are still,
the worlds around me at rest.
Clementine?
Dylan’s voice is thin, desperate.
I’m coming, I whisper inwardly, hoping Ganymede won’t hear my thoughts. But as soon as the words have bloomed in my mind storms start to swirl in the globes, tiny golden stars flashing as they tumble over a darkened village, snow falling over mountains. Pale bone-like castles swim in seas of glitter, bright blossoms scatter over crooked clock towers. A young woman sits on church steps in one globe, her face turned to the sky, and in another there’s an acrobat in a silver suit on top of the tallest needle tower, hands together as if he’s about to jump.
I rush to the stairs, sliding one hand up the pale banister as I run as fast as I can to the top, and down the first corridor. My ears feel stretched with listening for her, my skin tight with goosebumps. And then the globes in the alcoves of the wall begin to glow, and the air thickens around me.
I turn slowly, my belly a pit of snakes.
Ganymede is here.
‘You!’ she says, coming at me down the corridor fast as smoke, a wolfish snarl on her bony face. ‘I don’t know how you keep getting in here, but you won’t leave so easily this time.’
She raises an arm and there’s a silvery, shivering sound that rings through the house. Dust and tiny flakes of plaster rain down over our heads, a cold mist swirls between us, and by the time I can see clearly the grand staircase has vanished. Ganymede looms over me, and there’s no way back.
‘Speechless?’ she whispers. ‘Cat got your tongue? Not my Portia, surely – Portia!’ A white cat comes bounding down the corridor, green eyes like cold fire, and Ganymede acknowledges her with a nod. ‘Show me now – do you have our mystery girl’s tongue? Open up!’
The cat opens a pink mouth to meow loudly.
‘It doesn’t seem to be in there,’ Ganymede says.
