by Emily Rodda
‘I’m afraid of bears,’ Mimi said simply. ‘When I was little, I had a book of fairytales with a story about bears in it. The pictures were very scary. Sometimes I still dream bears are chasing me. Those same bears.’
Her cheeks had grown very pink, but she made herself go on.
‘Jim said there were more bears in the forest than there had been before,’ she said. ‘We thought the Blue Queen had put them there. But why would she do that? She wanted us to get to the castle safely, to bring her the Key. And she didn’t need the bears as spies – she had her blue butterflies for that. So I wondered if …’
‘If you’d created the bears yourself!’ Conker yelled, slamming the table triumphantly. ‘Just by imagining them!’
Mimi nodded. She was looking down, and her face was still very red.
‘It was the same thing with the troll on the bridge,’ she said. ‘It looked exactly like a picture in the fairytale book as well. And just a little while before we got to the bridge, I’d been remembering that picture, and imagining the troll we were going to meet.’
‘So we have you to thank for that vicious beast,’ Tye muttered.
Mimi nodded. ‘And it ate the old troll,’ she mumbled. ‘It ate it!’ Suddenly her eyes brimmed with tears.
‘Never mind,’ Conker said, leaning over to pat her arm. ‘The old troll wasn’t much of a loss.’
‘It certainly wasn’t,’ snapped Freda. ‘Mean, smelly, gummy thing – always whining because it couldn’t eat folk any more, and had to live on dots and cake. What’s wrong with dots and cake, I ask you?’
Mimi wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. ‘So, anyway,’ she said in a low voice, ‘I thought, that’s why the Blue Queen wants the Key. She used it to change things in the Dark Time. But I can use it too. If I can make bears appear, and a door disappear, I can do other things, as long as I concentrate hard enough.’
‘How clever of you, Mimi!’ cried Bertha, absent-mindedly helping herself to the last pancake.
‘Excellent!’ said Conker, nodding appreciatively. ‘Well, so it was my lemon drop that went into the fire! Lucky I gave it to you, eh?’ He beamed around, as if expecting congratulations.
‘I knew the Blue Queen would be able to tell the pendant was a fake, as soon as she had it in her hand,’ said Mimi. ‘So throwing it into the fire seemed the best thing to do. Spoiler had told us that if the Key was destroyed, Rondo would end so I created a few effects to convince him and the Blue Queen it was really happening.’
‘You convinced all of us,’ Tye said dryly.
‘That was the idea,’ Mimi admitted without a trace of guilt. ‘I thought the more scared everyone looked, the more panicky the queen would get, and the easier it would be for us all to escape. I really enjoyed it. Everything I imagined just – happened, and I got better and better at controlling it. Then Hal told Tye that things might just change, and so I tried that, too.’
She grinned, remembering. ‘That was fun. The best bit was making that fur bedcover turn into worms.’
‘Sometimes I wonder about that girl,’ Leo heard Freda mutter to Conker.
‘I wasn’t very happy with the rug I put under Leo, though,’ Mimi said regretfully. ‘The pattern’s much too modern-looking for a proper flying carpet. But it was the only one I could think of at the time, and I had to work fast.’
‘It was when I saw the pattern that I realised what you’d been doing,’ Leo sighed. ‘What a relief that was.’ He was finding it hard to stop smiling.
There was just one shadow over his happiness. ‘I was hoping to get Spoiler out of Rondo,’ he said, looking down at his hands. ‘The thought of that kept me going quite a few times. But it didn’t happen.’
‘What happened was almost as good,’ grinned Hal. ‘George fought the queen for the Key. I’d say the pact between them was well and truly dissolved last night. By now, George will be getting as far away from the castle as he can, and trying to find a hole to hide in.’
Leo laughed. So did Mimi, who didn’t seem a bit annoyed that Mutt hadn’t been his sole concern. Maybe, Leo thought ruefully, she’d suspected it all along.
‘Well, what I say is, all’s well that ends well,’ said Bertha. ‘The Blue Queen and Spoiler think the Key has gone for good, so they’ll stop plotting to get it back. But the Key hasn’t really gone at all, so now that Mimi and Leo have got Mutt they can go home whenever they like!’
‘They can,’ Conker groaned. ‘They can use the Key and go from here. We’ve got to get across the bridge. And that troll –’
‘Oh, the troll’s a squirrel now,’ Mimi said casually. ‘I changed it as we flew past the bridge. I didn’t know how to change its personality, so it’s probably still pretty vicious, but at least it’s small. I mean, it couldn’t actually bite your leg off, or anything.’
‘Mimi,’ Hal began, frowning. ‘Don’t you go –’
‘I won’t go around changing things just because I can, if that’s what you’re going to say,’ Mimi said hurriedly. ‘I promise I won’t. But the troll was my fault, so I thought it was okay to change that.’
‘And we knew the seven swans weren’t really swans at all, Hal,’ Leo put in. ‘Surely you can’t blame Mimi for imagining them changing back to their real –’
‘Of course not!’ exclaimed Hal. ‘If only I’d known about them when I stole the Key, I would have done it myself – or tried to, at least. By the time Jim came to me for help, it was too late. The Key was out of my reach. I had to tell Jim I didn’t have the power to change anything any more.’
He shook his head. ‘So now everyone thinks I’m a burned-out wizard,’ he said. ‘As if it isn’t bad enough being called a hero when all I did was steal something from a weak, helpless fool, then go and hide it.’
Leo knew exactly how he felt. He would have felt the same way.
‘It mightn’t seem very heroic,’ he said. ‘But you ended the Dark Time, Hal, and you were the only one who could have done it. Who else knew enough to guess where the Blue Queen was getting her power? And who else could have taken the Key out of the Blue Queen’s reach, and tried to arrange things so she could never lay hands on it again?’
‘And all because of me,’ Conker said, puffing out his chest. ‘I was the one who fetched him, you know.’
‘You found a Gap into Langland, Conker?’ exclaimed Bertha, very impressed.
‘Oh, it was nothing,’ said Conker modestly.
‘It was a complete accident,’ Freda snorted. ‘He fell into it, going after a particularly fast dot. It’s just behind Posy’s flower stall – in that blind alley between the cake shop and the bank.’
‘I’d put the music box away after George disappeared,’ Hal explained. ‘I loathed the sight of it by then. I knew exactly where George had gone, of course. He’d been sneaking in and out of Rondo ever since our father first told us about it. For twenty years the box sat in a cupboard. But it was still wound up, just as George had left it, so –’
‘So I was able to get through!’ Conker broke in. ‘And I found myself squashed into this cupboard, see? Freda came after me, bless her heart, so then we were both stuck in the dark.’
‘Typical!’ Freda snapped.
Conker grinned at her. ‘So we just banged on the door till Hal let us out. You should have seen his face when he saw us!’
‘You should have seen yours,’ Hal retorted.
‘You both yelled so loudly I thought I’d go deaf,’ Freda smirked.
‘So we and Hal got talking,’ Conker went on. ‘After he’d – after we’d – got over the shock, that is. He explained about the music box. We told him how bad things were at home, and about the monster army, and all …’
‘And I realised that my brother George was the man Conker called Spoiler,’ Hal said heavily. ‘It was a very nasty moment, I can tell you. I was certain that George was letting the Blue Queen use the Key – while keeping it safely in his own hands, of course – in return for power and a comfortable life. That w
ould be so like him. So …’
‘So you came here with Conker and Freda!’ Bertha breathed. ‘Oh, Hal, what a risk! If you hadn’t been able to get the Key, you wouldn’t have been able to go back!’
‘That’s true,’ Hal said. ‘When I think about it now, it seems strange. I’d avoided risks all my life before that.’
He shrugged. ‘Maybe I was tired of being careful, reliable, predictable Henry Langlander. Or maybe I was so angry with George, and so determined to stop him, that my natural caution just got swamped.’
‘Like Leo’s, when he followed me,’ Mimi said thoughtfully. ‘You really are alike.’
She clasped her hands and looked at Leo soulfully. ‘It’s the eyes,’ she whispered. ‘The steady, responsible eyes.’
‘Shut up, Mimi!’ Leo muttered.
Tye smiled. ‘The resemblance is remarkable,’ she said. ‘In more ways than one.’
‘The Blue Queen saw it, all right,’ Hal said grimly. ‘It made her loathe you, Leo, even more intensely than she usually loathes people who defy her. You must take good care in the future. The queen never forgets an enemy – especially one who has defeated her.’
‘Like you did, Hal, when you stole the Key from Spoiler,’ Bertha sighed in admiration.
Hal looked rueful. ‘We were lucky to find George alone in his room that day,’ he said. ‘If the queen had been with him, things might have been very different. As it was, I was able to get the Key without waking him. He was wearing it on a chain around his neck.’
‘Hal took me with him when he used the Key to wish himself back to Langland,’ Conker said proudly. ‘That was my second visit.’
‘And I told you it would be your last,’ Hal said, nodding. ‘I was determined that travel between the two worlds was going to stop, so that nothing like the Dark Time could ever happen again. I’d already talked to young Bethany about the music box, and written out the rules. All I had to do to complete the process was hide the Key. So instead of returning it to the place where it belonged –’
‘Inside the silver ring on the lid of the music box,’ Leo put in quickly.
Hal raised his eyebrows. ‘Quite so,’ he said approvingly. ‘Well, instead of putting it there, I buried it, still threaded on the chain, under my old tool shed in the back garden.’
‘Yet somehow it got out of the earth,’ Tye said quietly.
‘Like a curse!’ Bertha breathed.
‘Not a curse,’ Leo said, glancing at Mimi. ‘Mr Higgs.’
‘Very loyal and scrupulously honest. And so good with camellias,’ Mimi chanted, as Hal looked confused.
‘Mr Higgs worked for Aunt Bethany,’ Leo explained. ‘The old shed was falling down, so Mr Higgs cleared it away and built a new one. He probably found the Key then, and gave it to Aunt Bethany. She was always saying how honest he was.’
‘And Aunt Bethany put the Key in a box with all this other junky old jewellery she never wore,’ Mimi said, sounding rather awed. ‘She just happened to leave that jewellery box to my sisters and me in her will. I just happened to think the pendant was interesting, and chose to have it. Then I just happened to go and stay at Leo’s place, where the music box was.’
She looked at Hal. ‘It sounds to me as if the Key didn’t like being hidden away. After all your trouble, it gradually worked its way back to the music box anyway.’
Leo expected Hal to snort at this, but instead Hal nodded.
‘Obviously it was a mistake to think that I could separate the Key and the music box forever,’ he said. ‘At the time I thought I could do it, though. I thought I had done it. I set things up to make it look as if I’d drowned. Then Conker brought me back to Rondo, and I’ve been here ever since.’
‘But why, Hal?’ Leo asked, frowning. ‘I mean – why did you maroon yourself here? You didn’t have to do it.’
Mimi shouted with disbelieving laughter.
Hal smiled and shook his head. ‘Who would you rather be, Leo?’ he asked. ‘Dear old reliable Uncle Henry, who wears high starched collars and expects every day to be very much like the day before? Or Hal, who lives by the river, has friends like Tye, Conker and Freda, and never knows what adventure each new day will bring?’
He laughed at the look on Leo’s face. ‘You, however, are a different case entirely,’ he said firmly. He turned to Mimi. ‘And you, too,’ he added. ‘You’re young, and you have your way to make – and people who love you dearly, though they probably don’t understand you at all.’
‘What makes you say that?’ asked Mimi, with a slight return of her old, prickly manner.
‘You remind me of my Aunt Alice, as a matter of fact.’ Hal said, grinning at her. ‘She was just a little thing, but she kept the family hopping! She was very fierce and determined – not at all what young ladies were supposed to be like in those days – and she played the harp like an angel. Ended up marrying a man who ran a travelling music show. It was a great scandal in the family at the time, but I understand Alice and Enzo were blissfully happy, so that’s all that matters.’
‘Aunt Alice!’ Mimi laughed in sudden, pure delight.
‘Right,’ said Hal, suddenly very businesslike. ‘You must go – quite quickly. You’ve been here nearly three days already, and, according to my father, three days is the Key’s limit for return without time penalty.’
‘W – what?’ Leo stammered. ‘What does that mean?’
‘Well, presumably it means that you can stay here for three days without losing any time at all at home,’ Hal said vaguely. ‘As long as you’ve got the Key, of course. I’ve never needed to worry about it, myself. But Dad and Mother often came here for little three-day jaunts, apparently – whenever they felt they needed a change – and no one ever noticed they were gone.’
Saying goodbye was harder, far harder, than Leo had imagined it could be. Especially saying goodbye to Bertha.
‘I’m going to put off my move to the city for a little while,’ Bertha said, her bottom lip trembling. ‘I’m too soft-hearted for my own good, I know, but I can’t bear to leave poor old Macdonald forever without so much as a goodbye.’
‘Of course you can’t,’ said Leo.
‘I should tell him what I’ve learned about foxes being good at keeping dots away,’ Bertha added. ‘Also, I’m feeling quite drained after fighting that wolf, and the troll, and the Blue Queen. I need a few weeks’ rest.’
‘Of course you do,’ said Mimi.
Bertha sniffed, cleared her throat, and tossed the bobbing poppy out of her eye. ‘So,’ she said. ‘When you come back, if you don’t leave it too long, you’ll know just where to find me, won’t you?’
‘Yes, we will,’ Mimi and Leo said together. And Mimi straightened Bertha’s hat and re-tied her ribbons, one last time.
‘Best to leave from outside, I think,’ Hal said casually. ‘I’ll take you.’
So Mimi scooped up Mutt, who was still sleeping the sound sleep of a very relieved and grateful little dog, and she and Leo followed Hal out the front door and on into the shade of the willow trees.
‘Just one thing,’ Hal said in a low voice. ‘I didn’t want to say this in front of the others, but –’
‘You don’t want us to come back,’ Mimi muttered, all the light dying from her face. ‘You think it’s too dangerous, because the Blue Queen –’
‘Quite the contrary,’ Hal broke in, shaking his head. ‘You’ll have to come back, I’m afraid.’
As Mimi stared at him, overjoyed but obviously confused, he glanced at Leo to see if Leo, at least, understood.
‘We’ll have to show ourselves in Rondo quite often, and pretend we’ve never been away,’ Leo explained to Mimi. ‘We’ll have to pretend we couldn’t get home. Otherwise the queen will realise that the Key wasn’t destroyed after all, and she’ll never stop plotting and planning to get it back.’
‘Yes!’ Mimi cried gleefully. ‘Oh, of course!’
‘But that wasn’t what I wanted to say,’ Hal went on. ‘I wanted to tell you
–’
‘That we mustn’t depend on you to get us out of trouble every time we come here,’ Leo interrupted. ‘You’re not good old reliable Uncle Henry any more. Right?’
‘Right,’ Hal said firmly. ‘But that’s not –’
‘You’re afraid the Blue Queen will be so angry with us after what’s happened that she’ll be even more dangerous next time,’ Mimi suggested. ‘She’ll want revenge, and –’
‘Well, yes,’ Hal said. ‘Of course, but –’
‘You’re afraid that we’ll play the music box for too long, or shut it before it runs down, so the blue butterflies will come out, and see us, and report back to the queen that we’re out of Rondo,’ said Leo.
‘And you’re afraid we’ll tell our parents all about this, so they’ll insist on coming with us next time,’ added Mimi. ‘Then my brothers and sisters will come. And then word will spread and –’
‘Will you let me finish?!’ Hal roared.
Mimi and Leo looked at him, stunned. He thrust his hair off his forehead with long, impatient fingers.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘Now. I’m afraid of all those things you’ve mentioned, yes, but I’ve finally decided it’s pointless worrying about things I can’t control. And that means you. I have to trust you to be sensible and to look after each other as true friends should.’
True friends.
Leo and Mimi exchanged slightly startled looks, then grinned and nodded.
‘No problem,’ Leo said.
‘So what did you want to tell us, Hal?’ Mimi asked rather quickly.
Hal glanced back at his house. Bertha, Conker, Tye and Freda were all peering out of one of the front windows.
He lowered his voice even further. ‘I simply wanted to tell you something you may not have quite realised yet. It won’t be difficult to deceive the queen into thinking you live in Rondo all the time. When you come back to see us you will find very little has changed. Because while the music box is wound up, whether it’s playing aloud or not, life here goes on. But when the music runs down, life here simply – stops – until the box is wound up again.’
Leo swallowed. He hadn’t thought about it quite like that. ‘But that’s – that’s awful!’ he whispered.
