Dragon's Green

by Scarlett Thomas

  For a moment, Maximilian was tempted. All he had ever wanted in life was to go to the Otherworld, to find out everything he could about magic and mystery and how life really worked. Of course, that was before he had discovered the Underworld, which seemed rather more interesting.

  Now something made him hesitate.

  If he destroyed the book then he would, for once in his life at least, have been a true friend. He would be able to save Effie – not only from having her recent adventures wiped out, but also from having to become a Book Eater, a Diberi. Effie herself wouldn’t have read the book and then destroyed it, as the Diberi do. She would have read the book but then found that it had been destroyed by someone else. It wasn’t perfect, but it did technically mean she couldn’t be called a Diberi.

  Maximilian took from his pocket two folded sheets of paper, smoothed them out and read them one last time. They made so much more sense now, after everything that had happened. Should he leave them here for her? Could he maybe say he found them in the back of the book? No. He had to tell the truth. Effie deserved that. She had helped save him from the six-eyed tarantulas. And she was the first person who had ever really trusted him.

  He put the pieces of paper back in his pocket. Hid the book under his jacket. Skulked to the dark, small kitchen to find a box of matches. Then he let himself out of the house and, in a dark alleyway around the corner, in an old metal bin that a local hooligan had once stolen from his school, Maximilian burned the last edition of Dragon’s Green. Darkness flickered in him as he did this – burning books has never been something associated with goodness after all – but from this darkness would come light. He was almost certain of that.

  Wolf, freed from the earthstorm, ran across the grass and found Leonard Levar cursing and desperately mumbling some sort of incantation, with his hands pressed against the wall of the old derelict pub, the Black Pig. Whatever he was trying to do did not seem to be working. Raven was lying on the ground, unconscious.

  ‘What have you done to her?’ Wolf shouted, raising his sword.

  ‘The coward speaks,’ said Levar. ‘You couldn’t strike me before, timid child, and you can’t strike me now. Although I wouldn’t bother striking me on her account anyway. She’s . . .’

  At that moment, Raven blinked and sat up. She had never felt so powerful in her entire life. Of course, she couldn’t attack Leonard Levar. Witches cannot attack. But she could, with a flick of her wonde, cure Wolf of all the injuries he’d sustained during the earthstorm. What else could she do? Aha. She could lift herself off the ground just a little – not exactly flying, but something similar – and arrive just next to Effie on the other side of the green. With Raven’s huge increase in M-currency, and Lexy’s skill at administering tonics, they soon had Effie sitting up.

  Leonard Levar was hobbling away from the Black Pig. So he couldn’t get a bit of extra M-currency from the derelict old heap. Fine. It was now in the witch. Who cared? All he needed to do was find Dragon’s Green, wipe out what the Truelove girl had done, get the boon that enabled him to find the Great Library, and then he could come back just as powerful as he had been before . . . and take some pleasure in killing these children. The boys could simply have their throats cut. But the girl hero he would kill slowly. And as for the witch who had stolen his lifeforce . . .

  ‘Oh, yes I can,’ said Wolf. Something about seeing Effie still lying on the ground had made him able to raise his gleaming Sword of Orphennyus and bring it down, now, hard, right through the centre of Leonard Levar’s frail body.

  ‘Arrrgh!’ screamed Levar, falling to his knees on the grass.

  Of course, he was not physically injured. Not exactly. Wolf had correctly realised that his sword did not cut or pierce. However, this blow had wiped out almost all of Levar’s remaining M-currency. And since it was really only M-currency keeping him alive in both worlds, this hurt.

  ‘No!’ Levar shouted. ‘Leave me alone. What did I ever do to you? I’ll pay you. Hmm? How about that? I have millions of pounds and billions of krubles. Put down that sword now and come back to my shop with me. I’ll make you rich, boy. You don’t need to hang around with these stupid children any more.’

  Wolf looked across the grass at Effie. She was slowly getting up. Lexy seemed to be giving her jam from a jar. The earthstorm had tinged the darkness with streaks of pale flame and russet. The odd earthworm still hung suspended in the air and there were autumn leaves floating slowly back down to the ground.

  The girls were now hurrying over to help. Wolf raised his sword again.

  ‘My friends are worth more than all the money in the world,’ he said. ‘So . . .’

  Leonard Levar put up his hand. He used almost all his remaining M-currency to trap a small nerve in Wolf’s spine, which made him freeze completely. Then Levar reached into his inside pocket and drew out a business card.

  ‘Skylurian Midzhar,’ he said, desperately, with almost the last tiny bit of his M-currency. ‘Help your fellow Diberi. Now!’

  Magical business cards are by far the most efficient form of communication in the modern world. If you possess one, you can call on its owner at any time of the day or night and they must come to you instantly. If they are far away, they must use magic to get to you. Skylurian Midzhar was, however, at that moment only three streets away in a taxi on her way home from a rather tiresome dinner party thrown by her publishing company’s most successful author. Should she simply ask the driver to change course? Could one arrive to save one’s evil co-conspirator in a minicab? Perhaps not.

  Skylurian had drunk a lot of champagne, followed by an unexpectedly delightful Chablis and a dessert wine given to her by a poet. She was a little tipsy. No matter. She took out her ivory wonde and made herself sober. Removed the small soup stain from her black dress. Made her heels three inches higher. Smote the cab driver. And . . .

  Suddenly, above Levar and the children, came a flash of something that could have been lightning, had it not been bright blue. The sky rumbled more deeply than it would ever do with normal thunder. The ground shook again for a few seconds. Leonard Levar might have lost almost all his lifeforce and been reduced to a trembling wreck on some unkempt village green, but Skylurian Midzhar was more powerful, beautiful and devastating than ever. She had so much lifeforce she barely knew what to do with it any more. And she knew the importance of making an entrance.

  Perhaps a bit too much blue smoke? But when it cleared . . .

  ‘Oh my God,’ said Raven, coughing and trying to rub the smoke from her eyes. She could detect extremely dark magic in this fellow witch who had just arrived. Not just dark magic, but something beyond that. Something not just evil, but deeply, horribly evil. And there was something else, too. When the blue smoke had cleared a little, Raven realised she recognised this witch. She was that woman from the dinner party. The woman responsible for commissioning and then inexplicably pulping her mother’s books. The owner of Matchstick Press.

  35

  While Leonard Levar coughed and blinked his eyes – that infernal woman really had created a lot of smoke – Raven unfroze Wolf, who fell to the ground and started trying to rub the painful spot on his back where the magic had entered. Raven and Lexy started work on curing him immediately, with Raven trebling the power in all Lexy’s tonics with just a small flick of her wonde.

  ‘What is going on here?’ said Skylurian Midzhar, once she was sure everyone could see her in all her shimmering glory. ‘Leonard?’

  ‘Help me,’ he said. ‘These children . . . These brutes . . .’

  Effie looked at Levar. ‘You killed my grandfather,’ she said to him. ‘And you tried to kill my friends, and then me. I don’t care who you’ve called to help you. I should have done this a lot earlier.’

  She drew back the athame, ready to plunge it into his heart.

  Skylurian Midzhar watched this with interest. She slowed the girl slightly with a spell, although of course spells don’t work that well on someone wearing the Ring of the
True Hero. Skylurian knew that true heroes were not to be messed with. Well, not much anyway. And this one looked as if she had potential for . . .

  ‘Leonard?’ she said. ‘It looks as if I am a little too late. Is there anything I should know?’

  Of course, there was a lot he could have told her. It was now too late to save Dragon’s Green, but he could have explained where to find the other 499 books, in order that she could put them towards their great mission after his demise. But evil is not known for being helpful. Leonard Levar actually didn’t give a stuff about what happened to Skylurian Midzhar and the Matchstick Press and all her other stupid sham companies, or the other Diberi, after he was gone. Skylurian had crossed him at their last meeting, after all. And even though he’d called her for help now, she was barely doing anything. He hoped she would suffer when the time came for her to . . .

  The girl was raising the athame. It was almost too late. Except . . .

  ‘Of course,’ Levar said, in a tone that made Effie hesitate. ‘I know where your mother is. I know where she went on the night of the worldquake, and I know where she is now. If you agreed to work with me, then I’m sure it would be possible for me to . . .’

  Effie didn’t move for a few moments.

  ‘I don’t know why he even bothered to call me,’ said Skylurian Midzhar to Raven. ‘If you possess information about someone’s missing mother, and they are just about to kill you, then it is always possible to negotiate with them and . . .’

  ‘You don’t know anything about my mother,’ said Effie. ‘You’re lying. I should have done this earlier, before you hurt my friends.’

  And then Effie pierced Leonard Levar’s heart, or what was left of his heart, with her athame. No actual blood was spilled. But the dagger did take away the very last of Levar’s lifeforce. Once all his M-currency was gone, Leonard Levar became a mortal man again. Since mortal men do not live for three hundred and fifty years, once Realworld nature returned everything to normal Levar’s body simply crumbled into a tiny pile of dust. A tiny pile of dust topped with a tattered three-piece suit, a grey wool coat, a pair of grey underpants, a small jar of mustard, a silver spoon and an ornate brass key.

  ‘That was for my grandfather,’ said Effie quietly. ‘And you know nothing about my mother. Nothing.’

  Skylurian Midzhar looked around at the other children, taking each one of them in, including the black-haired witch to whom she had just spoken, and who looked familiar, but whom she could not place. Her gaze returned to the strongest one. The traveller. The true hero. The one who had just killed Leonard Levar.

  ‘Well,’ she said. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘I am Euphemia Truelove,’ said Effie. ‘And if you had anything to do with my grandfather’s death . . .’ She raised her athame. Effie didn’t want this accomplice of Levar’s to see the key that was resting almost at the top of his remains. Better to distract her with the idea of another battle.

  ‘I see. You’re a little avenging angel. Interesting. Yet I sense you are almost, but not quite, one of us. Here’s my card.’ She strode over to Effie, with only magic stopping her high heels sinking into the grass, and presented her with a silver and blue business card.

  ‘If you decide you want to join us more permanently,’ she said, ‘we could use someone with your power.’ She looked around at Effie’s friends. ‘She’ll let you down in the end,’ she said to them. ‘I’d watch out if I were you.’

  And then, in another puff of blue smoke, she was gone.

  Effie reached down and picked up the key. She was going to save her grandfather’s books at long last. Even if that meant she never found out what had happened to her mother, it was what she had to do. She had to stop the Diberi from becoming any more powerful.

  ‘Do you think she was serious?’ said Lexy. ‘When she asked Effie to join her?’

  It was the following morning and the five friends were tired but exhilarated. They had met an hour before school began and Wolf had used his sports captain’s key to let them into the tennis centre, where they’d made themselves as comfortable as they could in the dark cupboard among all the old tennis balls and bits of green fluff. Then they filled each other in on all the bits of the story they didn’t know.

  Maximilian told them all about burning the book in the alleyway, and Wolf explained all about trying to rescue Effie’s books from Levar, and how he and Max had been trapped in the cave. Effie’s story took the longest, and although she didn’t tell them all the details of her visit to the Otherworld, they got the general idea.

  After Maximilian had destroyed the book, Carl had taken him back to the old village green by the Black Pig. But Carl had taken one look at the scene there – the strange shades of red in the air, the worms still suspended above the ground, the weird swirling leaves, the powerful witch and so on – and decided to flee, leaving Maximilian with a very long walk home. This morning, Wolf had borrowed Maximilian’s pager and was still trying to persuade his brother to come back this afternoon and help move the books. Otherwise, the children weren’t sure how they were going to get them out of Levar’s storeroom. They were safe, presumably, for the time being. But Effie wanted to move them as soon as possible.

  ‘That Skylurian woman was just trying to mess with our collective spirit,’ said Wolf. ‘You get it in sports all the time. But we’re stronger than that. We’re a team.’

  Lexy nodded solemnly. ‘We’re a good team,’ she said.

  When Wolf had arrived home late the previous night his uncle had been waiting for him, holding the thin birch cane that he’d used to beat Wolf since he was a small boy. Wolf had walked right up to his uncle, taken the cane from him and snapped it. ‘If you ever lay a hand on me again . . .’ Wolf had begun. But his uncle had looked so frightened that Wolf hadn’t needed to continue. Wolf’s uncle had even begun to stammer an apology and a promise to go to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings more often, but Wolf had just gone to his bedroom and quietly closed the door.

  That morning he’d told his uncle that his early house clearance job had been cancelled, and his uncle had not even argued. He’d simply poured another cup of tea and nodded.

  ‘It’s significant that Skylurian Midzhar is a publisher,’ said Effie. ‘I’m just not sure how. But it’s all to do with books, I can feel it. I’m sure she and others will still be trying to get to the Great Library in Dragon’s Green.’

  ‘I bet it’s not the last we’ll see of her,’ agreed Raven. ‘But we can defeat her if we have to, just like we defeated Leonard Levar.’

  ‘She seemed a lot stronger than him, though,’ said Effie. ‘I wonder why she didn’t try to hurt us last night. But we must investigate her. And I realised something about Miss Wright, as well.’

  ‘Miss Wright?’ said Lexy. ‘Our old teacher?’

  ‘You know she won that publishing competition and then disappeared? Well, three guesses who the publisher was.’

  ‘Matchstick Press,’ said Raven.

  ‘Exactly.’

  There was a lot more to talk about, but soon it was time for double English with Mrs Beathag Hide and none of the children wanted to be late. Even after facing and overcoming deep evil, none of them yet felt confident about dealing with Mrs Beathag Hide. And of course Maximilian, Effie and Wolf were going to be in severe trouble for escaping from detention. It seemed as if this had happened a lifetime ago, but really it had been only yesterday. Still, Maximilian knew he had to find a way to tell Effie his secret. He had to get everything off his chest.

  As the others hurried towards the main school building, he touched Effie’s arm, got her to stop, and then handed her two folded pieces of paper.

  ‘What’s this?’ she said.

  ‘A copy of the codicil, and a letter your grandfather wrote you. I should have given them to you yesterday. I shouldn’t really have them at all.’ He looked down at his feet. ‘I was going to pretend I found them in the book, but then I realised that true friends don’t lie and . . .’

 
‘And they do what instead?’ Effie’s tone was cool. ‘How did you get these?’

  ‘I stole them. From your grandfather’s hospital room.’

  As quickly as he could, Maximilian told Effie the story of how he’d been helping out at the hospital at the weekend – reading to elderly patients and getting them magazines from the shop and so on. He’d overheard a conversation between the surgeon, Dr Black, and his mother, Nurse Underwood. There was talk of magical boons, and of a complex and difficult operation that might succeed in getting Griffin Truelove’s spirit into the Otherworld before his body died in this world. Maximilian was shocked – he’d had the most normal upbringing imaginable and now here, suddenly, was his mother talking to a magical surgeon! He heard about the boons and the codicil and everything. Because he had never seen a boon, and because he longed so desperately to have any connection at all with the world of magic, he’d snuck into Griffin’s room.

  Then, when Griffin was asleep, he’d looked at everything. He’d read the codicil, which was lying there on the table. He’d lifted up a sealed letter, addressed to Effie, in order that he could take a picture of the codicil underneath. But just after he’d pressed the button on his old phone to take the photograph, the door had opened. Maximilian had hidden behind a curtain, still holding the letter. Someone had come in and taken the codicil away. A man. Effie’s father.

  ‘He probably would have taken the letter as well if I hadn’t been holding it,’ said Maximilian. ‘I know it’s no excuse for what I’ve done. But I guess I did sort of save the documents for you. In a way. I printed the picture of the codicil and . . .’

  ‘But why didn’t you give them to me yesterday?’ Effie said.

  Maximilian shrugged and looked at the ground.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I thought if I pretended that the spectacles were telling me extra things that would help you, then you’d want to be my friend.’