by Amy Wilson
‘Chaos on the outside!’ Io grins. ‘How wonderful! Though, really, you can’t imagine you’ll break them all? Every single one? You’d change the whole world – who knows what would happen!’
‘Don’t tell me it can’t be done,’ Dylan whispers, looking at her with flashing eyes. ‘You have done a million things that should never have happened. Don’t tell me this isn’t possible. Why should any three people control all the magic of the world? How can you think it’s right?’
‘I . . . I don’t,’ Io stutters, lost for words. ‘But the prisoners aren’t all unhappy: they have their worlds, their magic; there are parties, celebrations . . .’
‘It’s all an illusion,’ says Dylan. ‘Nothing’s real. Not the heat, or the food – none of the things they make in there. They all know that. I knew that.’
‘I tried to help,’ she says. ‘I brought Helios to you. I even made a little house, but you wouldn’t accept it. You didn’t accept your magic, Dylan! I meant no harm. I went in there to help them all!’
Ganymede snorts. ‘You went in there to get away from me.’ She looks at Dylan. ‘We locked those with magic away to keep the world safe. I saw you lose your temper; I saw how you denied your magic until it leaped out. It could have been a danger. We were supposed to—’
‘No,’ my mother interrupts, the flowers in her hair spreading like vines down her back, violet blooms opening with a powerful scent. ‘Ganymede, you’re wrong. We were supposed to help those who struggled with their magic. We weren’t supposed to make a prison! Our parents were mistaken when they started to lock people away for showing a little talent with the wind, or the sea. And we made it worse!’
‘So we’re just supposed to let them all go back to their own realities?’ Ganymede stares at her. ‘All of them?’
‘Imagine it, Gan.’ Io’s golden cloak swirls as she turns. ‘The whole world full of magic – full of the wonder of it!’
‘The world is already full of wonder,’ Ganymede says. ‘This magic we’re talking about has teeth, Io! Not every magician is good and kind, or very wise at all. We would be unleashing chaos.’
‘But that’s where it’s supposed to be,’ I say. ‘Out there, with the rest of the chaos. Look at this house. Look at the cracks, the way the worlds turn and storm; it can’t be contained here forever. All this magic isn’t supposed to be locked away! You’ve taken it from the world and it’s made you monsters!’
We stare at each other, she and I, and I see it suddenly: her fear of letting it all go. Of being left here alone, not even the snowglobes to give her a purpose.
You don’t need it, I say. You have family – isn’t that better?
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she whispers. ‘I don’t have you. People come and go. You will go home to your pa, at the end of this. Callisto will leave. And Io and I will fall out, we always do, and then she’ll storm off, and I’ll be here alone for another eternity!’
‘Or . . . you could stop hiding the house,’ Dylan says. ‘Everybody knows there’s something strange about this part of town, so let them see it. Go out once in a while, meet other people.’
‘We can’t just go out and about like normal people!’ she gasps.
I laugh. I can’t help it. She looks so horrified at the idea. She stares at me, and I try to swallow it, but it bursts, over and over, echoing through the corridor, making the globes swirl.
‘I’m sorry,’ I manage eventually. ‘But yes you can. It might not be easy, but you can do it. I do it, every day!’
‘But what would Papa say?’ Ganymede asks, her eyes shining.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ says my mother firmly, raising a hand and breaking a couple of snowglobes with a quick flash of her dark eyes.
Feathers and beads spill out into the corridor, and Ganymede raises a hand to her mouth as the magicians within disappear.
‘He was a good man, Gan, but he was mistaken about our purpose in all of this. He was supposed to be teaching those with magic, not imprisoning them – that’s why this house was built. There were flaws, perhaps, but at least it was the right intention. Maybe we can return to it, some day, but for now it just needs to not be a prison any longer.’ She picks up her skirts and starts to rush down the corridor ahead of us, snowglobes pinging as she goes, glitter and tiny foil shapes cascading out all around her. ‘Come on!’ she says, turning back with glittering eyes. ‘Let’s do it!’
The house is aglow with a mess of glitter and beads and bright golden stars. We have been through every room, broken every globe, sent every magician back to where they came from. And every time we do, the air gets lighter, the candles in the sconces brighter. By the time we reach the ground floor, we are exhausted and wired with adrenaline, and the house is full of sunlight.
Io and my mother dance between the study and the main front room; Dylan and Helios are in the kitchen, probably raiding cupboards for food more than bursting snowglobes; and Ganymede and I are in the main hall. The globes that line the shelves are in uproar, and the tiny figures press their hands and their foreheads to the glass, for they know what’s coming; the whisper has been as loud as a tsunami. The tiny worlds that dangle from the ceiling on copper chains are swinging, tinkling as they brush against each other, and Ganymede is watching it all with a strange look on her face, angst and hope all tangled together.
‘Ready?’ I ask.
‘Let’s do it together, little snippet,’ she says, taking a deep breath. ‘All of them at once. If you will?’
She comes towards me and holds out her hands. They are less like claws now, as if letting go of so much has already softened her. Her question is uncertain, almost shy as she looks down at me. She is so tall, so strange, like the most beautiful, awkward bird you ever saw, all angles and feathers and sharp, staring eyes. I put my hands in hers, and she bites her lip. Her song is moon-soft and bright as silver. It brushes against me, waiting, tentative, and I realize I can’t join her until I forgive her for everything that happened here. Until I do, it will not come.
I close my eyes, and let it go, piece by piece. The thing that held on to every difference, every mean word from Jago. The thing that settled over my skin like armour and pushed everyone away, that blamed this house for all my struggles, that blamed my mother for leaving me. It breaks, and the song comes tumbling out, joining with hers, spiralling out as her face brightens with hope. We stand together in the middle of the hallway and our power blooms out around us, the globes breaking with a chime that rings through the house.
Tiny shells and stones of every colour rain down around us – pine needles, silver flecks, foil fish and gleaming golden sand bursting out from every shelf. The vast front door bursts open as our song grows, joined by Io and my mother, and then Dylan, and a tide of it rushes out from our feet, spiralling down the steps, bursting out into the air, making the blue sky bluer, all the colours in the world brighter. Birds flit into the garden, their song joining ours, and all the tumult of the world bursts in. I can hear the traffic on the main road, the bell that rings as the door to the bakery opens. Ganymede’s eyes widen as it rushes around us, as people stop and stare up at the house that was here before anything else, and hid among them for so long.
‘What did we do?’ she whispers.
‘Chaos!’ thrills Io, grabbing her arm and pulling her forward. ‘Look at it, Ganymede! Come out of here and see!’
Her eyes sparkle as she pulls her sister on to the broad, shining steps, and my mother comes to stand by me, threading her arm through mine.
‘You did this,’ she says, her voice fierce. ‘You changed everything, Clementine. Nobody else could have done this, not in all those hundreds of years. You are so like Gan, like all of us – only you could have shown her that it was nothing to be afraid of.’ She catches at Dylan with her other arm and draws him near. ‘You are both true magicians, full of heart, and that is a very lucky thing for me.’
I peer around her at Dylan. Despite all our adventures, he’s looking bette
r than he has since I first found him here. Perhaps it was all that power rushing around him; he couldn’t help but breathe it in.
‘You’ll be even more magical now,’ I say to him as my mother joins her sisters to look out at the world that now looks straight back in at them.
They are such a sight, in all their feathers and gold-spun robes, that the people on the street cannot help but stare. Helios sprawls before us in a patch of sunlight, keeping one eye on prowling Portia, and Dylan smiles, reaching into his pocket and pulling out the pale, round fruit that fell from my tree in his snowy world.
‘So will you,’ he whispers. ‘It didn’t disappear, Clem. It’s a real fruit . . .’
I take it with a shaking hand. ‘Look at that! We have magic, Dylan! Real, actual magic!’
‘It’s a good job,’ he says. ‘I need to convince Mum and Lionel they’ve always wanted a dog as big as a small horse to move in, and I might need a bit of help.’
THE END
Acknowledgements
My first thanks to go my brilliant, insightful editor Lucy Pearse, without whom this book might still be a shambles of mean unicorns and even meaner jelly babies. You saw the truth I was trying to get to before I did, and ever so patiently cleared away the hiding places I’d built for myself along the way, and I am grateful.
Thank you to everybody at Macmillan who works so hard to make all of this possible, especially to Jo Hardacre, Amber Ivatt, Kat McKenna and Jess Rigby. To Rachel Vale for designing a truly beautiful cover, and to Helen Crawford-White for such wonderful illustrations.
To my agent, Amber Caraveo, thank you for everything, but especially on this occasion for having absolute confidence in me when all I had was the wobblies.
A big thank you to all of the authors out there who have supported me and my books along the way, and to all of the bloggers and the teachers and the reviewers too. I am very lucky to have your support, and I hope you all know just how much I appreciate every tweet, every review, every kind word.
Thanks to my friends Caroline, Lu, Nikki, Jackie, Sam, Fiona, Hywel and Wibke and Julia and Sophie, for everything, and to Aviva, this time especially for your Granny’s kitchen, which seems to be at the heart of all my fictional houses. (I’m afraid Ganymede made rather a mess of it on this occasion.)
Finally, thank you to my family: to my Mum Helen, and to Mike, to Judith and Charles, and to Lee, and Theia, Aubrey and Sasha. These acknowledgements are rather late getting to Lucy because I cannot find the right words to express what you mean to me, I’ll just have to hope you know it anyway, through my actions if not my words.
About the Author
Amy Wilson has a background in journalism and lives in Bristol with her young family. She is a graduate of the Bath Spa MA in Creative Writing and is the author of the critically acclaimed novels A Girl Called Owl – longlisted for the Branford Boase Award and nominated for the CILIP Carnegie medal – and A Far Away Magic. Snowglobe is her third novel for Macmillan.
‘A story of wild winds and bitter frosts with the warmth of friendship at its heart’
Abi Elphinstone, author of The Dreamsnatcher
Owl has always wanted to know who her father is, but when you’ve got a mum who won’t tell you anything and a best friend with problems of her own, it’s difficult to find time to investigate.
When Owl starts seeing strange frost patterns on her skin and crying tears of ice, her world shifts. Could her strange new powers be linked to the father she’s never met?
‘Original and compelling . . . an unexpected tale of grief, magic and monsters’
Kiran Millwood Hargrave, author of The Girl of Ink & Stars
When Angel moves to a new school after the death of her parents, she isn’t interested in making friends. Neither is Bavar – he’s too busy trying to hide.
But Bavar has a kind of magic about him, and Angel is drawn to the shadows that lurk in the corners of his world. Could it be that magic, and those shadows, that killed her parents?
‘Amy is the crowned queen of magical middle grade . . . I devoured it! Full of real emotion and gorgeous imagery, with family and friendship firmly at its heart’ Sarah Driver, author of The Huntress trilogy
‘Amy Wilson spins magic with her words. Spellbinding. Brilliant. I loved it!’ Eloise Williams, author of Gaslight
‘The most breathtakingly magical fantasy novel I’ve read in a very long time’ Stephanie Burgiss, author of The Dragon with the Chocolate Heart
‘There’s magic, darkness, light, friendship, tolerance, acceptance and wonder. You can’t read this book and not want to see the inside of one of these snowglobes’ Steph, ‘A Little But a Lot’ alittlebutalot.wordpress.com
‘Amy Wilson weaves a story like no one else can. Both the writing and the story are pure magic from start to finish’ Lu Hersey, author of Deep Water
Books by Amy Wilson
A Girl Called Owl
A Far Away Magic
Snowglobe
First published 2018 by Macmillan Children’s Books
This electronic edition published 2018 by Macmillan Children’s Books
an imprint of Pan Macmillan
20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR
Associated companies throughout the world
www.panmacmillan.com
ISBN 978-1-5098-8581-7
Copyright © Amy Wilson 2018
Cover illustration by Helen Crawford-White
The right of Amy Wilson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Visit www.panmacmillan.com to read more about all our books and to buy them. You will also find features, author interviews and news of any author events, and you can sign up for e-newsletters so that you’re always first to hear about our new releases.
