‘Good boy,’ she said to the dog. ‘Good boy.’
Cautiously the dog lowered its head and extended its tongue, slurping something out of the palm of Alice’s hand. There was a loud, echoed plop, as the creature threw back its head and swallowed. Then silence.
‘Okay,’ Alice called back. ‘We’re good to move on.’
‘Did you poison it?’ Arlo asked.
‘No, I distracted it.’
‘With what?’
‘Gottacake.’
‘You said you didn’t have any more,’ Arlo said.
‘I lied,’ Alice admitted.
‘I don’t like people lying to me.’
‘No,’ Alice replied. ‘And I don’t like being eaten by large dogs. Let’s go.’
Alice had been right about the way in. Behind the dog was a door that opened easily to reveal a set of broad steps. Air spiced with a yeasty sweetness wafted up to meet them, making Arlo think of a bakery. They were about to move when the dog’s deep happy breathing was suddenly replaced by a low self-satisfied whistle. Alice and Arlo spun around to see the dog no longer there and in its place, holding the end of the dog’s chain, a tall boy with a smug smile and a head of dark tangled curls.
‘So,’ he said. ‘Are you impressed?’
‘Where’s the dog?’ Alice asked, leaning forward aggressively, fists balled at her sides, as if the boy had just stolen her beloved pet.
‘Oh no,’ the boy grinned. ‘There was no dog.’
‘But we saw it,’ Arlo said.
‘You saw what I wanted you to see,’ the smug boy replied. ‘Becoming a dog is beyond me, but making you think I was a dog, that was easy. The mind is far more open to suggestion than you might realise.’
The boy stepped forward, his eyes only on Arlo, as if Alice wasn’t even there. He leaned in close, his eyes blazing with something like hatred.
‘You see, other people might have been impressed by your power, but power is no use to you if you don’t possess the skills to direct it. You have no control, your magic is basic and unrefined, whereas I—’
He clicked his fingers and a perfect red rose appeared between his fingers. He swivelled and handed it to Alice.
‘I am perfectly in control. Malcolm Strawbridge at your service, madam. Pleased to meet you.’
It was clear Malcolm Strawbridge believed he knew Arlo. Being a twin, Arlo was used to this and did not flinch. If the boy thought he was Stefan, all Arlo had to do was play along. He hoped Alice would understand and not blow his cover. Luckily Malcolm seemed too caught up in gloating to be paying close attention.
‘Not that I need to worry about you at all, by the looks of things. Let’s see which rules we have broken here tonight. Out of the dormitory after lights out. Check. Bringing a stranger into the compound. Check. And, worst of all, stealing a gottacake. I should think they will expel you.’
It was plain Alice did not like this boy. It was hard to imagine how anybody would.
‘It’s going to be awfully hard to prove we had a cake, after you went and ate it,’ she told him. He smiled and with another flourish of his hand produced the cake, uneaten.
‘You think I’d be stupid enough to eat a gottacake just for pleasure? I’m about to fly my way to certain victory, just as this hopeless case will fly his way to elimination. And you have just made that a little bit easier. This cake will give me extra altitude.’
Arlo knew that if Alice spent much longer near this boy, she would hit him. He needed to get rid of him.
‘You’re out of the dormitory too,’ Arlo said. ‘So if you snitch we’re both in trouble. And you’re the one in possession of a gottacake, not me. So if you want to be scary you’ll need to try harder. Empty threats don’t frighten me.’
Arlo was surprised by how steady his voice was, and how easy it was to look the bigger boy in the eye. Things were different in this world. He was stronger here. Stronger than he yet knew. He could feel it.
Malcolm’s smile turned to a sneer.
‘They can tell when you’re lying.’
‘You’d better hope that isn’t true,’ Arlo bluffed. ‘Because we both know who’s the bigger cheat. How about we end this now with a little competition?’
The boy’s eyes widened in excitement, just as Arlo guessed they would.
‘What sort of competition?’
‘A race,’ Arlo said. ‘I will race you back to the dormitory. If you are there before me, I will admit to everything. But if I beat you back, you will never speak of this. Do we have a deal?’
A small cloud of suspicion flitted across the boy’s face, but it passed quickly. He was too confident to be careful. Arlo hoped Alice wouldn’t laugh, and give his trick away.
‘You’ll never beat me,’ the boy said. ‘I am faster than you and the darkness will not slow me. I heard you talking before, you know. You couldn’t even find the door.’
‘On three then,’ Alice said, understanding at once. ‘Get ready...’
Arlo crouched, as if preparing to run, although in fact he didn’t even know in which direction the dormitory lay. Malcolm bounced on the balls of his feet, limber and alert. In normal circumstances he would be a formidable opponent.
‘One…two…three!’
Malcolm took off with a grace and speed that was astonishing.
Alice turned to Arlo and grinned. ‘Nicely played,’ she said.
‘Smart beats magic,’ Arlo replied.
‘Maybe,’ Alice said. ‘But I get the feeling we’re going to need them both.’
Stefan was woken by shuddering and stirred to see Malcolm Strawbridge standing above him, glowering angrily.
‘How did you do it?’
Stefan forced his bleary eyes open. ‘Do what?’ he asked, speaking quietly so as not to wake anybody.
‘Beat me back here,’ Malcolm hissed. ‘What magic did you use?’
In his sleepy state, Stefan was finding it difficult to make sense of this. But whatever it was Malcolm thought he’d just done, it had clearly unsettled him and that was reason enough to play along.
‘I have a lot of magic,’ Stefan replied.
‘I took a short cut. You could never have beaten me.’
‘But I did,’ Stefan smiled, still not having any idea what Malcolm was talking about.
Malcolm looked at him, waiting for more of an explanation.
Stefan could see the anger tightening Malcolm’s shoulders.
‘All right. You have won this one. And a promise is a promise. I’ll not say I saw you and your girl sniffing around by the kitchens. But let me make you another promise right now.’ Malcolm leaned close, the whites of his furious eyes glowing in the darkness. ‘I promise that I will crush you. You will never be a member of the guard squad. You have an enemy here now. And you didn’t want me for an enemy.’
Stefan nodded. You and your girl. That could only mean Arlo and Alice. He watched Malcolm skulk off into the darkness. Arlo was here.
Stefan waited a full ten minutes, to make sure Malcolm was no longer skulking in the shadows, and then leaned across to the next bed and gently shook Harriet awake.
‘Can you do me a favour?’ Stefan whispered. ‘I need to go to the kitchens. If anybody sees I’ve gone, tell them I am in the toilets.’
‘Why do you need to go to the kitchens?’ Harriet asked. ‘If you get caught you’ll be—’
‘I just have to,’ Stefan said, knowing there was no way he could explain this. He just hoped she would trust him.
He slipped out of is bed and was gone before she could ask any more questions.
AS SOON AS Stefan left the dormitory he could tell Arlo was nearby. There was a warmth in his stomach calling to him. He closed his eyes for a moment, crouched in the shadows of the lockers at the edge of the main courtyard and tried to place the source. He realised how much he had missed his brother; his throat constricted and heavy tears welled in his eyes. He sniffed them away, breathed deeply and headed for the kitchen. He would need to stay a
lert, whatever the reason for Arlo’s visit.
‘Arlo.’ Stefan breathed his brother’s name into the still, yeasty air and waited.
‘Stefan.’ His own name came back, and then the sound of feet padding quietly over the flagstones.
Stefan and Arlo hugged, long and hard, their hearts beating in happy time. A thin light spilled in through the dining-hall window, illuminating their smiles.
‘It’s great to see you,’ they both said at once. Stefan noticed Alice, hanging back, trying to hide the fact she was feeling left out. Stefan hugged her too.
‘We don’t have long,’ Alice warned him. ‘We have some information we need to share with you.’
‘And I have something I need to tell you,’ Stefan replied. ‘You go first.’
‘Who is Malcolm Strawbridge?’ Alice asked.
‘He’s one of the competitors,’ Stefan replied. ‘If you asked him, he’d say he’s the only competitor. He’s arrogant and obnoxious and seriously good at everything. And he means to crush me.’
Only a week ago, the thought of someone so cruel wanting to crush his brother would have given Arlo sleepless nights. Now he found his mind focusing only on the challenges ahead.
‘So he’ll become one of the guards?’
Stefan nodded. ‘I’d say so.’
‘He’s dangerous.’
‘Yes,’ Stefan agreed. ‘He is.’
‘No.’ Arlo shook his head. ‘That’s not what I mean. I don’t think it’s just that he wants to beat you. I think there’s more to it than that.’
Arlo looked at Alice, to see whether she’d had the same thought.
‘Earlier, when we saw him,’ Alice said to Stefan, ‘he had changed himself into a dog. Is that normal here? Can a lot of the people change their form?’
‘No, I don’t think so,’ Stefan replied. ‘It’s like I said, his magic is very strong.’
‘Perhaps there’s more to it than that.’
Arlo explained as best he could, starting with the ceremony they had observed in the basement, and then his trip into the forest and all that Joan had told him about the tunnel and Haven.
When Arlo had finished, Stefan turned to Alice. ‘There is one thing I have been wondering,’ he said. ‘Why didn’t you stay here and try to find Jackie? Why did you go back through the tunnel?’
Alice looked at the ground, her face full of shame. ‘I gave up,’ she said. Her voice was thick with regret. ‘I watched, I learned all I could, I stayed awake night after night thinking up plans but every morning I dismissed them. I knew I could never do it alone. I decided my only hope was to find Mr Williams again, and tell him what had happened. But even that seemed hopeless. Mr Williams had told us tunnels only opened for twins, and so without Jackie I thought I was trapped here forever.
‘But then,’ she continued ‘the night before the next full moon, I dreamt of a new tunnel opening up on the bank, exactly where we came out. It wasn’t a clear dream, the details were hazy, but what I remember most was the feeling of the dream, the certainty. I woke with the strong sense that there was still hope. I crouched there all evening, willing the moon to rise, higher and higher. It was midnight, the moon was high and the world had gone quiet, and I heard the sound, the faint echo of our world, whispering cars and trucks and trains on the breeze. I turned, not daring to believe, and it was, well—’ Alice hesitated, searching for the right word. ‘It was different, that time. Different from the time with Jackie, and with you. The tunnel was smaller, tighter, I couldn’t even crawl, I had to slither, and I could feel the weight of the world above me. Halfway through I was almost certain I couldn’t move any further, not backward or forward. I thought I was going to die there, trapped in the middle of nowhere. But I breathed out slowly, and remembered Jackie, and told myself I wasn’t the one who was suffering. And perhaps this is the strangest thing of all, but the whole time, I had the strongest sense that somehow the tunnel itself was fighting to keep itself from closing over, like I was caught in the middle of a mighty battle I didn’t properly understand. And that’s all I know.’
The twins looked at one another, then back to Alice’s harrowed face. If either had wondered about doubting her, all such doubt had passed. They knew they could trust her.
‘I’m sorry,’ Stefan said, reaching out and touching her arm. ‘But we’re here now, and we’re not going back without your sister.’
Alice sniffed back her tears and smiled. ‘Thank you.’
‘What was it you had to tell us?’ Arlo asked Stefan, remembering that his brother had promised news of his own. ‘How are the competitions going? You’re still here. That’s good, right?’
Stefan spoke quickly, aware that every moment he was away increased the chance of his absence from the dormitory being discovered. He told of the log competition, of the training sessions, the rivalries and the flying challenge ahead. And of Harriet. Alice and Arlo couldn’t help but notice how often her name was mentioned.
‘And you can trust her?’ Alice checked.
‘Who?’
‘Harriet.’
Stefan bristled. ‘Of course I can trust her.’
‘Joan said not everybody is what they seem to be,’ Arlo reminded him. ‘We have to be careful.’
‘I know I can trust her,’ Stefan repeated, anger bubbling through his voice.
‘How?’ Alice challenged.
‘The same way I know I can trust you,’ Stefan replied, staring back.
Alice gave a small forced smile and whistled out slowly between her teeth. ‘Okay, well I hope you’re right, then.’
‘So do I,’ Stefan answered. ‘On both counts.’
‘How do you plan to survive the flying challenge?’ Arlo asked.
Stefan instantly brightened. ‘That, my younger brother, is where you come into it.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Well,’ Stefan said, ‘how do you feel about learning to fly?’
‘That’s…’ Arlo couldn’t think of any word preposterous enough to finish the sentence.
‘It’s perfect,’ Stefan offered. ‘Tonight, neither of us could have ever beaten Malcolm back to the dorms in a fair race, but between us we made him look slow. I’m hoping he’ll fall for the same trick twice. I’m hoping everybody will.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘The competitions are never just races. They’re tests of endurance. I have found a place on the course where you can hide. And then during the competition we can swap places, so we both get a chance to rest and recover. That way, I am sure we can beat him.’
‘There’s just one problem with that,’ Arlo pointed out. ‘I can’t fly.’
‘Neither could I, three days ago,’ Stefan shrugged. ‘And now, look!’
Stefan raised his arms above his head and gracefully lifted into the air, hovering so that his knees were in line with Arlo’s eyes. After five seconds he fell heavily back to the ground and doubled over, hands on knees, sucking in deep breaths of air as if he had just sprinted the Academy’s perimeter.
‘It takes it out of you,’ Stefan said. ‘But I’m getting better. And you have time to practise. By Thursday you’ll be a champion.’
Arlo was not convinced, but he knew there was no point in arguing. ‘Tell me about the competition,’ he said.
‘Well, I don’t know too much yet,’ Stefan replied. ‘The Major likes to surprise us. But I know we will be flying over the wall. Back and forth, many times. That’s why I think we have a chance.’
‘How high is the wall?’ Alice asked.
Stefan shrugged. ‘Three times my height, I suppose. Maybe higher.’
Arlo and Alice exchanged worried glances. Just getting to waist height appeared to have exhausted Stefan.
‘How many competitors are left?’ Alice asked.
‘Twenty-five.’
‘How good are they at flying?’
‘It’s hard to know,’ Stefan said. ‘People like to keep their true potential hidden. There’s a lot o
f game-playing.’
‘So what do you need us to do?’ Alice asked.
‘I was hoping you might help with that,’ Stefan replied.
‘Give me a night to think, and I’ll get a message to you,’ Alice said.
Arlo marvelled at her confidence, how sure she was that all things were possible.
‘How will you get a message to me?’
‘That’s part of what I need to plan,’ Alice said.
Stefan nodded, but it was clear he’d hope for something more promising.
‘You’re doing well to still be in the competition, Stefan,’ Alice said, as if sensing Stefan’s nervousness. ‘We’ll get you through the next part.’
‘I haven’t said I’ll help yet,’ Arlo complained.
‘He’s your twin,’ she replied. ‘You’ll help.’ Alice tilted her head, looking up at a distant point
Arlo recognised the look. She was already making plans.
‘How long until the competition?’
‘Thursday.’
Arlo counted silently ahead. Five days to prepare.
‘We have the gotta syrup,’ Alice said. ‘That’ll be helpful. Yeah, okay, we’ll get you into the top ten, no trouble at all.’
‘I know you will.’ Stefan looked from Arlo to Alice then back again.
Arlo saw in his twin the same sort of steel he was beginning to find in himself. They were different now, stronger than he’d ever known they could be. He felt a surge of love for his brother, and hope for the days ahead.
‘I’d better be going,’ Stefan said, checking nervously all around. ‘Practise hard, Arlo. Alice, make sure that he does.’
‘But I don’t even know how to—’
‘Don’t worry. We’re naturals.’
Stefan gave his brother one short set of instructions, which Alice listened to intently, hugged them both and then faded back into the shadows.
Arlo looked at Alice, wondering how to break it to her that he couldn’t do it. She beat him to the punch.
The Tunnel of Dreams Page 11
