Philonecron was patient. He spent years building up his supply, storing bottles in thick containers under piles in the refuse dumps. He knew they would keep; the Underworld was a natural refrigerator. The only problem would be keeping the Shades from sensing the blood too early—hence the use of the rubbish yard filled with the fetid flotsam of Administration life.
He lured customers gradually, peddling his product on his garbage rounds. “They’ll be more where this came from,” he would say. “Just you wait.”
The Shades began to follow him on his rounds, lurking in the shadows to see if he might have something for them. He always did. More came, and still more.
“Come to the Vale of Mourning on the King’s Anniversary,” he would whisper. “I’ll have something for you. Tell everyone.”
The King and Queen’s wedding anniversary was a Kingdom-wide holiday in Death. All Administration offices were closed. So you would think someone would have found it odd to see an extra-large garbage wagon making its way from the central refuse dump to the Vale of Mourning, but no one did. Nor did any of the Administrators think anything of the swarms of Shades that seemed to be following it. The Dead were an odd sort, prone to strange gatherings, and the Administrators didn’t think much of it. Really, they didn’t think about the Dead at all.
Even the Underworld Security Agency would be closed. The ten-foot-tall Sons of Argus, with their burly bodies and giant clubs, would be so full of wine and roasted Calydonian boar they wouldn’t be able to see out of any of their one hundred eyes.
It was evening and a holiday. Time for fun. Time to frequent the ambrosia clubs and Anniversary galas. Time to drop by Tartarus (for Tartarus was always open for business) and watch the action, maybe buy a few souvenirs. Time to bathe in barrels of wine and darn the consequences. It’s a holiday!
So there were thousands of Shades on the Vale that night, like a giant spectral army, all buzzing in expectation. And there, on top of his great wagon, was Philonecron, eight feet tall, swathed in a giant black robe, with a magnanimous smile stretched oddly across his pale, shadowy face.
“Drink up!” he shouted. “There’s plenty for everyone!” He threw small jars one by one into the masses, and ghostly arms reached up and plucked them from the sky. “Don’t be shy!”
More Shades came and still more; in front of Philonecron legions of Dead clamored and thronged. “I am Philonecron!” he shouted, hurling bottles everywhere. “Friend of the Dead!”
“Philonecron!” a few voices shouted, and then more. In front of his eyes the Shades were thickening, gaining definition, character, even speech. One by one the Dead had life again—they were laughing, hollering, shouting his name. And with definition, character, laughter, came something else. He saw it in their eyes. They had will. He had them.
“Would you like some more?”
“Yes!” they screamed, and he picked up the tremendous hose he had made from Minotaur intestine and began to drench the crowd.
And then he waited. He waited until every last Shade he could see had been touched by the blood. Hundreds, thousands of useless shadows becoming whole before his very eyes. And they had him to thank for it.
“Does King Hades give you blood?” he shouted.
“No!” they cried.
“No! He denies you the one thing you want most. Is that fair?”
“No!”
“Ladies! Gentlemen! What kind of a king denies his subjects what they most desire? What kind of a king deliberately keeps his people in shadow? Death need not be a phantom existence. With me, you could Live again!” He had been practicing this speech for decades. He had it all thought through. “The Underworld is not for the gods, but for the Dead! For you! It’s time to take it back!” He raised his arms up in the air, so excited by the speech that he did not notice the cheers of the audience were slowly weakening.
“Rise up!” he shouted. “Rise up against tyranny! Rise up! Follow me! We will have a new rule in the Underworld!”
That’s when he noticed the immense shapes approaching him. He turned to look. Six Underworld Security Agents were lumbering toward him, clubs poised, apparently not glutted on Calydonian boar. Six hundred eyes blinked menacingly at him. Ten Griffins swooped down from the sky, howling and cackling, their enormous claws poised to rip into his skin. Three Erinyes appeared behind him, the snakes in their hair hissing wildly. And with them was the black, willowy form of Thanatos, riding in on a black winged horse, staring at him with an eerie composure that was marred only by a slight twitch in his left eyebrow.
The Erinyes grabbed him, pulled snakes from their hair, and tied his hands with them. Before they could gag him, he shouted to the throng in front of him, “See what they do? See? Knock down the Palace! Free yourselves!”
But it was too late. The effects of the blood were wearing off. They were becoming Dead again, Shades, phantoms, useless. They milled around aimlessly. Their will was gone.
Philonecron was pulled away. Thanatos appeared and raised his hands to the crowd. The Vale was silent.
“Go your ways, everyone,” Thanatos said, his voice carrying as if through eternity. “There is nothing for you here.”
Philonecron had expected to be sent to Tartarus—where there was a special chamber for disloyal Immortals. He wasn’t afraid. Pain only made him stronger. He would come out eventually, he would begin his collection again, he would have enough blood to sustain the Shades through revolution, and then he could sit on Hades’s ebony throne and lock all the Shades up in Tartarus for good. It would take time, but he would begin again. He would collect blood for years, decades, centuries if he had to. He would not fail next time.
But he was not sent to Tartarus. The Erinyes dragged him into Hades’s Palace. Hades stood before him, a mountain of cold rage.
“Philonecron,” he said, his black eyes burning. “You are banished. You have betrayed me, and my world is forbidden to you now. You may never set foot in the Kingdom of the Dead again. You will spend all of eternity wandering through the empty plains of Exile.” He turned to go. Philonecron squirmed. Hades stopped, turned, and added, “Oh, and have a nice life.”
For one year Philonecron wandered around the outskirts of Death, forbidden by Hades’s very words to cross the threshold into the Kingdom. He slept in a cave and spent his days wandering the outer banks of the Styx with the Unburied—the lost souls who, for one reason or another, Charon would not ferry into Death.
He practiced his spell casting (there was a great advantage to having a demon father) and performed experiments on the Unburied. He followed the Messenger into the Upperworld nearly every day to collect blood, but as the days went by, he could not help but despair. He would never have enough, he could never keep the Shades alive long enough to overthrow Hades. He was a general with no army.
Then one day something happened. He was out on a blood-gathering round; the scent of Death had taken him to the body of an old woman somewhere in England. She had died peacefully, bloodlessly, and Philonecron would have to look elsewhere. But something struck him about the tableau in front of him. It was a typical deathbed scene: a family—a man, a woman, and a boy—tears rolling down their cheeks, heads bowed, whispers hanging in the still air. But there was something unusual about it. Something off. Something that caught his eye. The light in the room—no, no; the position of the body—no, no. It was the boy. There was something strange about the boy.
Philonecron could not believe what he was seeing. But it was true. There was no denying it.
The boy’s shadow was loose.
Chapter 10
Creative Problem Solving
GATHER SOME CLAY FROM THE BANKS OF THE STYX. You may have to bribe Charon to look the other way, but that’s easily done. It would be better to use clay from the other bank, the one in the Underworld, but you cannot go there. So you make do.
Take the clay. Soften it well with Stygian water.
Form it into the shape of a man.
Pause for a mome
nt and think about your place in history, think about how the Titan Prometheus did just this, so long ago, to make the race of Man.
Well, not quite this.
Take one Unburied. Don’t use force. Be gentle. You need his loyalty. Tell him you will make it worth his while. Tell him you are going to change things.
Show him the corpse of clay.
Tell the Unburied to lie down. Right inside it. It won’t hurt a bit.
Watch as the clay embraces his shadowy form.
Now take an urn of ram’s blood. Pour it over the body. Don’t be shy. Drench the clay.
Say the magic words.
Wait.
Wait…
Purse your lips.
Think.
Take an urn of human blood. Pour it over the body. Drench the clay. Don’t be shy.
Say the magic words.
Wait.
Wait…
Purse your lips.
Think.
Raise up your arm.
Mutter a few words.
Let the skin on your arm open, then the vein, and let your own blood, your half-demon-half-god blood, drip over the clay form.
Say the magic words.
Wait…
There!
Behold.
A limb twitches. And again. Clay skin adheres to clay bone. Unburied spirit relaxes into molded form. Fingers wriggle. Eyes open. Mouth. He blinks up at you, you nod, and he slowly lifts his body out from the ground that birthed him. Clay falls from him. He stands, he looks his body up and down. Feet. Shins. Knees. Thighs. Hips. Stomach, chest, shoulders, arms…it’s all there. He is a man, or something very like a man. His body seems to stretch before your eyes, the stocky frame becomes too tall now, too thin, soon he stands as tall as you do, you, his master, but he looks as though you could break him with a glance. His death-white skin stretches tautly over his frame. His face is like a white clay skull. His eyes are yellowed, like memory. His lips are gray and scaly.
Well, you say, looking him up and down.
And then you make more.
Soon you have twelve—a good number, an Olympian number—and you line them up, one by one, murmuring to them, murmuring to yourself. You have twelve, all identical, except for the letter of the alphabet you carve into each of their foreheads to signify the order they were made. You have twelve of them in front of you, their clay skin crackling, their every bone painted in shadow, and you hold your arms out magnanimously and say:
My children. My people. How beautiful you are.
We are one, you and I. We are the same.
We are citizens of Exile, and I am your leader.
Together we will make a Kingdom.
But we will not be content to stay here, for we must take back what has been denied to us.
Soon we will rule the Underworld.
But we need an army. And you are going to help me get it.
Their eyes drink in your meaning. You survey them up and down. Your eyebrow arches. You clear your throat. You clap your hands together and say:
Right…let’s get you some clothes, shall we?
The Gideon Trilogy:
Gideon the Cutpurse
By Linda Buckley-Archer
The year is 1763. Gideon Seymour, cutpurse and gentleman, hides from the villainous Tar Man. Suddenly the sky peels away, and from the gaping hole fall two curious-looking children. Peter Schock and Kate Dyer have fallen straight from the twenty-first century, thanks to an experiment with an antigravity machine. Before Gideon and the children can gather their wits, the Tar Man takes off with the machine. Gideon brings Peter and Kate to Colonel Byng’s country estate, Baslow Hall, where the children begin to understand what has happened to them. Soon Gideon, Kate, and Peter are swept into a journey through eighteenth-century London, and they form a bond that they hope will stand strong in the face of unfathomable treachery.
Gideon the Cutpurse, the first book of the Gideon Trilogy, introduces a fantasy series full of adventure and unforgettable characters.
LINDA BUCKLEY-ARCHER, a scriptwriter and journalist, began writing Gideon as a radio drama. When she read Gideon aloud to her children and they refused to let her stop for supper, she began to see its potential as a novel. She lives in London.
Visit www.thegideontrilogy.com to receive a free advance copy of Gideon the Cutpurse (while supplies last), send a message from the past, and more!
AVAILABLE JULY 2006
Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
New York London Toronto Sydney
Seven
The Hospitality of the
Honorable Mrs. Byng
In which Peter and Kate make the acquaintance of the Byng family and Peter demonstrates his soccer skills
Kate was unconscious for barely thirty seconds. When she came round, her face was drawn and her skin was white as paper. She felt sick and weak and all she wanted to do was close her eyes and escape from a reality that she was not ready to face—at least not just yet. Gideon carried Kate to a shady spot well away from the road and laid her gently on the grass. He took a shirt from his bag and folded it into a pillow for Kate’s head. Then he gave his water bottle to Peter, saying, “Stay with her. We are close to Baslow Hall, Colonel Byng’s house; I shall fetch a horse and will return as soon as I am able.”
Peter took the bottle like a sleepwalker. His world had temporarily flicked out of focus, and he was quite happy for it to remain that way.
“Peter,” said Gideon, putting a hand on his shoulder to get his attention. “Where have you come from?”
Peter looked up at him and realized he was going to have to decide whether to tell Gideon the truth. Could he trust him? He decided to follow his instincts.
“If this…is really…1763,” Peter said in a halting voice, “then everyone I know is living hundreds of years in the future. Kate and I come from the twenty-first century. I don’t understand how we got here. And I don’t see how we can get back. I…”
Peter couldn’t find the words to say anything else. He suddenly felt desperate.
Gideon’s face did not betray what he was thinking. He nodded slowly and paced up and down for a couple of minutes before answering him.
“I mean no disrespect when I say that I can scarce believe that what you have told me is true, and yet…my heart tells me that you are not lying. Fate put me in that hawthorn bush to witness your arrival, and I promise you that I will do what I can to help restore you and Mistress Kate to your families.”
Peter felt a surge of relief and gratitude welling up inside him. Tears pricked at his eyelids. “Thank you,” he replied finally. “I’m not lying to you, Gideon—I don’t understand how any of this happened, but I swear to you I’m not lying.”
Peter watched Gideon stride away to Baslow Hall. He set to wondering if his mother, so far away in California, had been told that her son was missing and what she would do. He had not seen her for nearly two months. Would she drop everything, tell the film studio that they would have to do without her, and get on a plane? Would she miss him if he got permanently stuck in 1763? Then it occurred to him that if he’d had a father who kept his promises, he wouldn’t be in this situation now.
The shadows were lengthening by the time Kate heaved herself up on her elbows and helped herself to some water.
“Are you okay?” asked Peter. Kate nodded.
“Lost in time,” she said after a while. “Why couldn’t I see it before? Everyone in fancy dress and speaking funny.”
“I thought that’s how people spoke in Derbyshire,” said Peter with a grin.
“Watch it,” said Kate. “And before you ask, my dad and Dr. Williamson at the lab are not trying to invent time travel. That only happens in stories. They’re studying how gravity actually works.”
“Will,” corrected Peter. “They will study how gravity works.”
An air of unreality descended on them while they sat in the warm, still air, waiting for Gideon. Peter sat obsessively folding and unfoldi
ng a slip of paper that he had found in his anorak pocket.
“You’re like Sam; you’re a right fidget!” snapped Kate, irritated. “What is it anyway?”
Peter unrolled the grubby scrap of paper and read, “Christmas homework. To be handed in to Mr. Carmichael on January eighth. Write five hundred words on: My Ideal Holiday.”
They both burst out laughing but soon fell silent. Chance had thrown Peter and Kate together, and whether they liked it or not, each was now a key person in the other’s life. But, of course, they had known each other for less than a day and a half, and neither had yet earned the other’s trust.
After a while Peter said, “You know, it’s got to be something to do with that machine thing that Gideon told us about. It might not be a time machine, but it’s all we’ve got to go on. We’re going to have to find the Tar Man, aren’t we?”
“I don’t know,” Kate replied. “Maybe it would be better to wait here…. My dad will work out what happened. I know he will. He won’t stop until he’s found us.”
Peter did not feel quite so optimistic about Dr. Dyer’s ability to travel back through time. But he also felt a pang of jealousy—he wished the feelings he had about his own dad were less complicated.
“I didn’t blur when I fainted, did I?” asked Kate.
“No, you didn’t, why?”
“Just checking.”
Gideon arrived not on horseback but sitting in an open carriage drawn by two glossy chestnut mares. Beside him sat a pretty, plump young woman in a severe black-and-white dress. She was perhaps twenty years old and she was balancing a basket covered with a muslin cloth on her knee. Golden curls escaped from beneath a cotton bonnet and tumbled over her rosy cheeks. The driver sat perched high up on a box seat. He held his back as straight as a soldier on parade and wielded a whip, which he cracked over the horses’ heads as they strained up the steep track.
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