by Garth Nix
Another one of Alfred’s Gifts, she assumed. But where did the Examination come into it?
The bolt of lightning that very nearly hit her provided the answer to that question, closely followed by a second, and a third.
Blinded and half stunned, she tried calling for help, but either the lightning interfered with her mental voice or Jack was tied up elsewhere in his own trials. What form they were taking she couldn’t imagine. For now she had to concentrate entirely on her own.
Another trio of lightning bolts left her feeling frazzled and more than a little crispy, like bacon that had been fried for too long.
Survival, she thought. That was Alfred’s point this time. The first test had been about finding Jack using her mental voice and getting home. Now it was just about staying alive, if she could. And her new Gift was the only thing she could draw on to help her.
She’d had no opportunity to explore or develop that Gift, though, not properly. Reaching for it now, she found it readily enough, coiled inside her like a part of her she’d never noticed before. It stirred when she called it. It seemed to listen when she spoke to it, albeit at some remove.
She felt the electricity building in the air and knew there was going to be another bolt coming her way soon. Her skin tingled and her hair stood on end.
“Protect me,” she said. “Don’t let the lightning hit me.”
Her Gift seemed to agree.
But when the lightning struck, it prompted a chain reaction of flashes and sheets that set the entire storm alight. Her Gift keened with the joy of it, and too late Jaide was reminded of how her first Gift loved more than anything to form storms and whirling dervishes at the slightest provocation. Why would this one be any different?
She curled into a ball and put her arms around her head, riding out the lightning while remembering Alfred’s words of warning after the first test: Your Gifts are not your friends. You think you control them, but you do not. They will fight you at every turn, unless you have … wooed them correctly.
How did one woo lightning, she wondered as the conflagration gradually eased. What could she possibly tell this Gift to make it calm down?
* * *
Jack had a mouthful of dirt. His plan had gone spectacularly wrong. His attempt to reach out to the earth around him using his second Gift had resulted in his cage of wood being broken open, but instead of letting him out, it had only let the dirt in. He felt the dirt shifting and wriggling into the coffin around him, inching its way down his limbs. If he didn’t think fast he would be completely covered and would suffocate.
But there was air down there with him, a bubble of it that had been trapped with him. It was just in the wrong place, squashed around his feet when he needed it at his head, so he could breathe it.
Jack could no longer speak aloud, but he didn’t normally speak aloud to use his first Gift. He just willed it to do what he wanted. He attempted this with the dirt while his air lasted, trying not to think about what would happen if he got it wrong.
The dirt obliged, shifting around him so the bubble could move up to his head. When his mouth and nostrils cleared, he took a deep, gasping breath. The air was already a little stale, smelling of earthworms and his own feet, but it was the sweetest breath he had ever drawn.
“Thank you,” he said, and the earth wriggled around him like an excited puppy. That surprised him, since it had come so close to smothering him a moment ago. Perhaps it didn’t mean him any actual harm, but simply didn’t know him well yet. They were new friends, and it was excited to meet him, but it would take time to understand that being so close to him might actually kill him if it wasn’t careful.
“Will you take me up?” he asked it, pushing his arms above his head through the damp soil. “Will you do that for me?”
The earth wriggled again, and slowly, painfully, he began to go upward.
* * *
The problem, thought Jaide, wasn’t that she had too much lightning. The problem was that it was the wrong kind of lightning. She might not be able to stop her new Gift from being excited and wanting to play, but perhaps she could encourage it to do so in a way that helped her.
“Yes, like that,” she said, sweeping her arms around her like a shepherd giving directions to flying sheep. “All the way around … that’s perfect!”
Crackling and snapping, her new Gift formed a cage of electricity that surrounded her completely. When next the hurricane’s lightning struck, it passed through the cage around her, leaving her completely unscathed.
A sense of accomplishment flooded her. She was still tumbling through a hurricane, but at least she was safe. She wasn’t going to die any time soon, unless it was of boredom, or starvation. She had befriended her second Gift.
“Is that it?” she asked aloud, assuming the Examiner could hear her somehow, even over the roaring of the storm. “Did I pass?”
After a long second, during which time she experienced a moment of doubt — what if she was wrong? What if she had misjudged the Examination completely? — Alfred’s voice spoke to her out of the clouds.
“You have passed,” he said, and suddenly she was standing exactly where she had been before, on the porch of Grandma X’s house, and Jack was next to her with dirt in his hair and a look of utter relief on his face. Alfred the Examiner was there, too, looking exactly as he had the previous day.
He was smiling and said, “Well done.”
The twins talked over each other in an attempt to explain what had happened to them and how resourceful they’d been. They had passed the second test and were now two thirds through to being senior troubletwisters! Alfred let them babble, not speaking again until it occurred to them who was missing.
“Where’s Stefano?” asked Jack, looking around him. Apart from the twins and Alfred, the house seemed empty.
“He has not yet completed his task,” was all Alfred said.
“What happens if he doesn’t?” asked Jaide, afraid of what the answer might be. If she or Jack had failed, would they have died underground or in a storm, or would they have been rescued?
“He tries again later.”
“Ohhhhhhh,” said Jack, feeling that he was understanding something now that should have occurred to him long ago. “That’s why he took this test with us but not the first one. He passed the first one the first time he tried. This is his second time at the second one.”
“What happened to his brother?” asked Jaide. “Did he pass?”
“That is for Stefano to explain, not me.”
Jaide nodded. Fair enough, she thought. She wouldn’t want people talking about her failures behind her back.
“What do we do until he comes back?” she asked.
“We wait. You may ask me questions, if you like.”
“When’s the next test?” asked Jack.
“Tomorrow. It will take all day.”
“I have soccer practice in the afternoon,” said Jaide.
“If you perform well, you will be able to attend.”
Jaide nodded, determined to do better than Stefano, at least, in the hope that he might miss out.
“Are the Examinations always the same?” asked Jack. He was wondering if his father had taken the same ones, and Grandma X.
Alfred said, “No and yes. Troubletwisters are always Examined when they obtain a certain degree of proficiency with their Gifts, but it is the Gifts that determine the shape of their Examination.”
Jack nodded. That made sense. So far his and Jaide’s Examinations had been similar in principle but very different in details. If he had been in his sister’s shoes for the last test, he would’ve died for sure.
“Can you give us any hints about the next one?” asked Jaide.
“Troubletwisters always ask,” said Alfred with a slight smile, “and they are always told no. I guarantee that you will be surprised.”
All three turned at the sound of a gasp from the hallway. Stefano had returned. He stood with his arms outstretched, his legs so un
steady that he dropped to one knee and almost fell over. Jaide couldn’t help rushing to help him. He looked so weak and pale. She took one arm while Jack took the other.
Stefano didn’t seem to see them for a moment. Only when he was back on two feet did he look down at them and shrug them off.
“Did I pass?” he asked in a cracked voice.
“Yes,” said Alfred. “You have passed.”
Stefano let out a shuddering breath.
“What happened?” asked Jack.
“Don’t look at me,” Stefano said. He turned and hurried up the stairs. A second later, the door to his bedroom slammed shut.
Jaide turned to Alfred to ask him the same question, but the Examiner had already disappeared.
“He really likes to do that, doesn’t he?” she said in annoyance.
A car pulled up the lane, and the twins recognized the distinctive decal flames of Grandma X’s new car. They waved, and Susan waved back from the passenger seat. The car pulled up on the gravel by the front porch. Susan got out but Grandma X didn’t; the car stayed running.
“I hear you did well,” Susan told them, giving them both a quick hug. “Your grandmother wants to take you somewhere, so go on and do that while I think about dinner. You’ve earned a night off from homework.”
Jack beamed. “How did you know we passed?”
“The usual way. She always knows everything.” There was no bad feeling in Susan’s voice. It was just a statement of fact. “Go on. Showers before bed tonight. You look like you’ve been rolling in dirt, Jack. You, too, Jaide.”
“It’s called soccer, Mom.”
“Either way, we need to get it off you. Where’s Stefano?”
“In his room,” said Jack. “Being grumpy.”
“Go easy on him,” said Susan. “You two don’t know how lucky you are.”
Jaide wanted to ask what she meant. It bothered her that Susan now knew more about certain things to do with Wardens than they did. It had been much easier in some ways when being troubletwisters was a secret they kept from her.
The engine of the Austin revved and the twins took the hint. Both went for the front door and, after a brief tussle that Jaide won, Jack settled into the broad back seat. Jaide loved the Austin even more than the old Hillman. Everything about it was smaller, making it feel more kid-friendly, and there was a compass mounted in the dash that had words in what looked like Latin rather than East-West-North-South. There was no rhyme or reason to the direction it pointed — or at least none Jaide could make out.
“Belts on,” said Grandma X, and with a quick wave to Susan they were off. “You both did very well. I’m proud of you.”
Praise from Grandma X meant a lot. The twins basked in it for a moment before curiosity got the better of them.
“Where are we going, Grandma?” asked Jaide.
“Somewhere very special,” she said. “Two somewheres, actually. I think it’s time you officially met the remaining wards of Portland.”
Jaide glanced excitedly at Jack, who was leaning forward intently. This was big, and it said more clearly than words that Grandma X was impressed by their progress. The first two wards they had only discovered by accident, and they had never been able to confirm what the other two were, although they had their suspicions.
“I bet it’s the cactus and the giant at Mermaid Point,” said Jack.
“What makes you say that?” asked Grandma X.
“There was that time you took us on a tour when we first arrived, when The Evil was attacking. You looked at the lighthouse, where the Something Read Ward is, then you looked at the cactus in Founder’s Park, and you told us about the giant. They must be the Something Growing and Someone Dead wards.”
“Is that what you think, too, Jaide?”
Jaide nodded, although something about Grandma X’s tone made her doubt. She felt as though she was being tested again.
“Are we wrong?” Jaide asked.
“Have patience. You’ll soon find out.”
They drove over the iron bridge and down Main Street, through the heart of Portland. It was a short trip. The Austin stopped at Founder’s Park and Grandma X killed the engine.
“It must be the cactus,” said Jack, unbuckling, and opening the car door. “There’s nothing else out here but grass.”
“Is it the grass?” asked Jaide.
Grandma X just smiled.
The cactus garden was in the center of the park, and resembled a miniature spiky forest. Some of the cactuses were over twenty feet high. The tallest had pink flowers at the top that always seemed to be in bloom. The twins crossed the grass until they were standing at the forest’s edge, within touching distance of the nearest spikes.
“We’re here,” said Grandma X.
“Which one is it?” asked Jack.
“You tell me.”
Jaide had half expected this. They were being tested again, but more playfully, she suspected, with no real consequences if they failed. No consequences except for embarrassment, anyway. She was determined to succeed, and before her brother did, too.
The twins split up and circled the cactus garden in opposite directions. None of the cactuses stood out, except for the largest, and it seemed unlikely that the Wardens would make the Growing Ward something so obvious.
But weirdly, none of the other cactuses stood out as anything unusual, either. Both twins had learned to trust their instincts when it came to things like this, and they were getting no twinges or odd signals that one was different from the others in any significant way.
Jack and Jaide met back where they had started. Grandma X watched them with an amused glint in her gray eyes.
“Give up?” she said.
“No,” said Jack. He was as stubborn as Jaide, in his own way, and if nothing had caught his eye on the outside of the cactus garden, then the ward had to be on the inside. Carefully appraising the fleshy branches and their long, tapering needles, he chose a path least likely to snag his clothes or skin and continued his exploration.
It was like a maze inside the garden, and much denser than it seemed from the outside. Jaide took the same way in but made a left turn where Jack had gone right, at a fat-bellied cactus that looked like a prickly snowman. That wasn’t the ward, and neither were any of the others they passed, but Jaide and Jack both felt a growing sense of something in the forest, something definitely out of the ordinary.
As they spiraled into the center, that feeling grew stronger.
“Ouch,” said Jack, catching his left forearm and leaving a tiny drop of blood behind on the thorn that had scratched him. Ahead, through the tall, greenish trunks, he saw what looked like a small clearing, and on the other side of it was Jaide, trying to find a way in. Throwing caution to the wind, he turned sideways and pushed through.
Jaide had a long, red weal across the back of her right leg, but she wasn’t letting that slow her down. She ducked under a curving spiked branch and stepped into the clearing at exactly the same time as Jack.
“I was first,” said Jack. It wasn’t true but saying it first was a kind of victory.
“No way! I’ll give you a tie at the very most.”
There were more important matters at hand. “What is this place?” Jack asked.
Jaide didn’t know, but it felt important. The clearing was seven feet across, and roughly circular, with cactuses pressing in on all sides. The floor was covered in fallen needles, and mostly level except for a low mound that crossed the ground between the twins. The feeling of significance radiated from that mound, but Jaide couldn’t see any living thing on or near it. Jack looked for mushrooms or, skimming the top with his sneaker to clear away the needles, some other kind of fungus, but there was nothing. Just bare dirt.
“I don’t get it,” he said. “There’s nothing here.”
“No,” said Jaide. “Nothing growing, anyway.”
“Maybe we’ve got the wrong ward,” Jack said. “Maybe it’s not the Growing Ward at all.”
&n
bsp; “You think it’s Someone Dead? Here?”
Both twins took a step back from the long, low mound, which, they both realized at the same time, did look a lot like a grave.
“Oh. Sorry,” said Jack, feeling a need to apologize to the person buried here, even though he hadn’t really done anything wrong. Grandma X would have been sure to stop them if they weren’t supposed to be there. It just seemed disrespectful to have been arguing on top of someone’s dead body.
“Who do you think it is?” asked Jaide, staring solemnly at the mound. That was definitely the ward. She had no doubt of it. “Could it be Grandma X’s father?”
“We can ask when we get back out.”
“After you,” said Jaide, happy to get moving now that they had a partial answer to the mystery. It creeped her out a little, the idea of a secret grave in the heart of Portland. Like a lot of Portland’s secrets, she suspected it had a sad history, and that made her think of Lottie, who was still trapped in the Evil Dimension and likely never to get home, unless her twin sister helped her.
“Is it your father?” Jaide asked Grandma X when they emerged from the cactuses, somewhat scratched and sobered by the experience. “We know his name was Earl Joseph Henschke, but people called him Joe, and he died in the house next door to yours the night Lottie disappeared. I don’t remember him being in the Portland graveyard, though, where Grandpa is. Is that him back there?”
If Grandma X was surprised by how much the twins had learned about her family, or by Jaide’s challenging tone, it didn’t show.
“It’s not Father,” she said, “but that’s a good guess.”
“Who is it, then?”
“Hester Bright. She requested to become one of the wards when she died. Such interment is not usual, but it has been granted in special cases, in return for extraordinary service. She was Warden of Portland for seventy years, and died when I was a girl. I remember her clearly. She could turn into three red foxes that each contained part of her, a very rare Gift that made her the terror of chickens for miles around. I’m not aware that she ever ate one, though; she just thought they were stupid and liked giving them a fright.”
