by Garth Nix
Jack felt hard, mechanical digits digging into his shoulder and realised that the hand wasn’t real flesh at all.
‘Rodeo Dave gave it to me,’ Rennie said, holding up the hand for closer inspection. It was strapped to her wrist, a device of fiendish complexity made of thin slivers of wood and metal, with thousands of tiny gears connecting them to a complex of nested springs within. They could hear the mechanism ticking when it was still, then whirring into busy life when Rennie moved it. ‘He said your grandmother had ordered it from her ‘special connections’ before her accident, but it only just arrived.’
Jack stared at it more closely, looking for evidence that it had come from The Evil. What if the hand went crazy and attacked them? But it showed no immediate sign of going on a rampage.
‘Does being touched by The Evil change you permanently?’ Jaide asked, emboldened by desperation. Everyone else who understood The Evil was busy fighting it, or forbidden by their father from talking about it. ‘I mean, would there be some way to tell if it had happened to someone we know, even if it was a long time ago?’
‘Maybe,’ Rennie said. ‘Why do you ask? Have you been threatened by someone?’
‘Not exactly . . . but he has been acting pretty weird lately.’
‘Who? Tell me at once, Jaide.’
Rennie took her by the shoulders. There was no refusing that anxious stare.
‘Rodeo Dave,’ Jaide said in a weak voice. ‘I mean, he was friends with Young Master Rourke, whose grandfather was definitely Evil, and he’s doing some pretty strange stuff out at the castle, and we thought Grandma might have sent you here to keep an eye on him, and—’
Jaide stopped as the mechanical hand closed firmly over her mouth.
‘I still have much to learn about The Evil, the Wardens, and the wards,’ said Rennie. ‘But I do know that people who have been taken over by The Evil have been released without permanent damage. In rare cases, people have even managed to free themselves, without the intervention of Wardens. But if you are part of The Evil for too long, it changes you. It steals away your humanity, your love. You become hollow, twisted, lost . . .’
She hesitated, and looked at her artificial hand.
‘I was a part of The Evil for long enough to feel that I was lost, but I wasn’t. And now I am a Living Ward. Such a thing has never happened before, and it is hard to deal with. Rodeo Dave . . . David has had some similarity of experience, so he can help me—’
‘You mean Rodeo Dave was once part of The Evil!’ Jaide couldn’t believe her ears.
Rennie hesitated again, biting her lip.
‘Don’t jump to conclusions,’ she said firmly. ‘David’s history is his story to tell. Ask him and perhaps he will share it with you. Let me just say that he, too, has known sorrow and loss, and he has helped me.’
Jack and Jaide looked at each other. That explained why Rodeo Dave was somehow connected with Warden business, and wasn’t freaked out by weird stuff happening. But if he had once been part of The Evil or working for it . . . maybe he wanted to go back to it, and finding the card was how he would make up for leaving The Evil before.
‘I didn’t bring you here to show off my new hand,’ Rennie said, snapping its fingers to bring their attention back to her. ‘I want to tell you something important. I have felt The Evil nearby, through the wards. It has come very close in the last few days, to the west and north, but not once has it directly tested the strength of the wards. I sense that it is waiting for something.’
‘Like what?’ asked Jack.
‘That I do not know,’ she said. ‘But I feel it . . . where I felt it before.’
‘In your hand?’ asked Jaide.
Rennie shook her head. ‘The Evil burns like a fire, but it is not fire. It is nothing, and it leaves nothing behind. I feel it in the absence of my hand.’
She raised the clockwork hand and flexed it again, marvelling at its complexity.
‘In losing much, I have gained much,’ she said. ‘But I would not lose any more. Be careful, my troubletwisters. If you leave the boundary of the wards again, as I sensed you doing yesterday, I will have to tell your grandmother.’
Jaide and Jack nodded very seriously, struck by the thought that Rennie could barge into the hospital and wake up Grandma X if they didn’t obey the rules, even if it was for a good purpose.
‘Listen, Rennie—’ Jaide started to say, wanting to explain.
Rennie cut her off. ‘You are late for school. You’d better get going before I land you in more trouble.’
‘But we just want to tell you—’ tried Jack.
‘Enjoy your ordinary life while you can,’ Rennie insisted, ushering them down the stairs. ‘It won’t stay ordinary for long.’
Outside, they found Cornelia sitting on Jack’s handlebars.
‘What are you doing here?’ asked Jack angrily. ‘Are you following us?’
‘Rourke!’
‘Well, don’t. Go away and leave us alone.’
Jack tried to shoo her from his bike, but one sharp lunge reminded him of the vicious hole in the photo where his father’s face used to be.
‘Here, Jack, let me.’
Rennie held out her clockwork hand. Cornelia nipped at it, but soon realised it was immune to her formidable beak. Leaving barely a scratch, she gave up, hopped onto the hand and was lifted away.
‘Off you go now,’ said Rennie. ‘I’ll find something to keep her occupied.’
The twins pedalled furiously down the street, leaving Rennie and Cornelia behind to take each other’s measure.
School had never seemed more pointless. After the usual welcome and group discussion about dreams (which the twins joined halfway through, making stuff up) the first lesson was Artistic Expression, which involved drawing or writing while Mr Carver improvised on a variety of musical instruments. Students were encouraged to join in, or even to dance, but no one ever did that. While the others sketched horses or spaceships, Jack concentrated hard on drawing a map of the castle from memory, looking for any secret spaces they hadn’t visited yet. Maybe one of them was where the entrance to Professor Olafsson’s other universe was hidden.
Tara, who normally sat with them, had greeted them warmly enough that morning, but soon picked up on their mood and went to join Kyle, who had been sitting alone at the table in front of them. Ever since he had argued with Miralda, no one else would talk to him.
Now the two of them were whispering excitedly with their heads close together, and Jaide was unable to avoid hearing what they were saying.
‘. . . Peregrinators pick a mystery every month, and they explore it until they figure it out or get bored,’ Kyle was saying. ‘I followed Dad once and listened in. They were talking about giant rats living in the sewers. Some of them wanted to go down there and check it out.’
‘Eww.’
Jaide agreed with Tara. She’d seen what Jack had looked like after he’d been down there.
But that wasn’t what made her want to join in the conversation.
‘Did the Peregrinators ever hear anything weird about the Rourke Estate?’ Jaide asked, switching tables while Mr Carver wasn’t looking.
‘Sure,’ said Kyle. ‘I was just getting to that bit.’
But with a sniff, Tara leaned back with her arms folded.
‘So now you want to talk to us – when we have our own thing going?’
Jaide stared at her in surprise. ‘What?’
‘It’s really difficult being friends with you and Jack, you know that? You’re always whispering and skulking around, keeping things secret from me. Sometimes I wonder if you want to be friends at all.’
‘I do,’ said Jaide. ‘That is, we both do. It’s just really hard to explain.’
‘Is it?’
‘It’s a twin thing,’ said Kyle. ‘I’ve got identical sisters, Esther and Fi. They can be real pains, too, but it’s not their fault. It’s the way they’re made. You just have to get used to it.’ He smiled calmingly at Tara. �
��Don’t let it get to you. That’s my advice.’
‘All right . . . I guess. But why do I have to do all the work?’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Jaide. ‘We’ll try harder, I promise.’
Tara relented a little. Her arms unfolded. ‘Okay. Good. Because I want to hear about what you did yesterday.’
‘You first,’ said Jaide to Kyle. ‘What were you about to say?’
‘What? Oh, yeah. The Rourke Estate.’ Excited to have doubled his audience, Kyle recommenced his story. ‘A few months ago, Dad had this thing in his head that there was buried treasure there.’
‘What kind of treasure?’ Tara asked.
‘Gold.’
Jaide leaned in even more closely, excitement rising in her.
‘Did they find anything?’ she asked.
‘No,’ said Kyle.
‘So why did your dad think there was treasure there in the first place?’ asked Tara.
‘There’ve always been rumours, and then a few months ago Dad found this weird thin strip of cloth with some words stitched on it. Not stitched very well – like maybe a kid did it for a craft project – but do you know what?’
‘What?’ asked Tara and Jaide together.
‘The thread was pure gold wire. And the cloth was velvet. So Dad went out a few nights in a row to search – I guess it was easy for him, since he’s the groundskeeper there and no one would’ve thought it weird if he was poking around with a shovel. But he never found anything. I assume he didn’t, anyway, because we didn’t suddenly become rich or anything.’
‘Maybe it never existed,’ said Tara.
‘Or it’s still there, waiting for someone to find it,’ said Kyle. ‘Wouldn’t that be cool?’
‘What were the words embroidered on the cloth?’ Jaide asked him.
Kyle nodded. ‘Dad used to walk around the house saying it under his breath. We all knew it, eventually.’
He leaned in closer and in a low, breathless voice intoned:
The path between fields,
the season grows old,
the deuce is revealed –
there lies the gold.
‘What does that mean?’ asked Jaide.
‘If only we knew! There are fields on the estate, and lots of paths, too. The rest, though, is a bit of a mystery.’
‘How big was this cloth again?’
Kyle held up his ruler. ‘About the same width as this, only half as long.’
‘Sounds like a bookmark,’ said Tara. ‘A bookmark of velvet with gold embroidery.’
‘Where did your dad find it?’ asked Jack, who had overheard and come over.
‘Just on the ground near the new menagerie cages, outside the lodge. Around the time Young Master Rourke moved there.’
‘Did he ask Young Master Rourke about it?’
Kyle put his ruler back under his desk and mumbled something that sounded like, ‘Finders keepers.’
Jaide leaned back, frowning. The bookmark must have fallen out of one of Young Master Rourke’s old paperbacks, and it certainly sounded like a clue to something. But if the groundskeeper of the estate hadn’t worked out the landmarks, how would she and Jack possibly do it?
‘What’s a deuce?’ asked Tara.
None of them knew.
The school’s ancient dictionary proved to be of some use, unlike the last time Jaide had used it. There were two definitions for the word deuce. The first was ‘an expression of annoyance or frustration’. She could see how that could come in handy at that moment, but it didn’t help. The second was all about sports and games. Deuce was when two tennis players were tied at the end of a game. It was when someone rolled two in a game of dice. A deuce was also ‘a playing card with two pips’.
Jaide blinked. Suddenly, she knew. She knew what the path between fields was, and what it meant when the rhyme talked about the season growing old. That and inter-world doorways being rectangular! It had been staring them in the face all along.
Before she could whisper what she’d figured out to Jack, a commotion on the other side of the class distracted her. Fingers pointed and a cluster formed around the windows, oohing and aahing.
‘Isn’t he just adorable?’ exclaimed Miralda King. ‘I think he wants to come in.’
‘Don’t open the window,’ said Mr Carver hastily. ‘He could be dangerous. They carry parasites, you know. And just look at that beak!’
Kyle and Tara hurried to see. So did the twins. There was a large, blue bird pacing up and down outside the window, craning to see past the faces peering out at it.
‘Oh no, not again,’ said Jack. ‘What’s she doing here?’
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Hidden in Plain Sight
ON SEEING JACK, CORNELIA BEGAN to pace more quickly, rolling her head from side to side.
‘Rourke! Rourke!’
‘She’s a she, not a he,’ said Jack, feeling defensive of Cornelia despite everything, ‘and she doesn’t have parasites.’
‘You know this bird?’ asked Mr Carver.
‘You could say that. But I don’t know what she’s doing here.’
He pushed through to the front of the throng.
‘Go home, Cornelia,’ he said, waving his hands at her through the glass. ‘Go on! Get out of here!’
The bird just watched him with a quizzical expression, as though he had gone mad.
‘Rourke?’
‘Is that all she says?’ asked Miralda. ‘I thought parrots were supposed to be intelligent.’
‘She is intelligent,’ said Jaide. ‘We just can’t understand her.’
‘Rourke!’ Cornelia tilted her head and bit at the window frame, pulling free a chunk of wood. Spitting it aside, she began digging again, widening the hole with her sharp beak.
‘Shoo!’ said Mr Carver, flapping at the window with an open book. ‘That’s town property!’
‘Rourke!’
She kept on digging.
With a sinking feeling, Jack realised that Cornelia was his responsibility. She thought he was her friend, even if he didn’t feel the same way in return anymore. If he didn’t do something about her, she would only get into more trouble.
‘I’ll take her away,’ he said. ‘If I can be excused . . . ?’
‘Yes, yes, do what you need to get rid of that feathered vandal.’ Mr Carver was normally a fervent advocate of animal rights, but not for anything that disrupted his school, it seemed. He gathered up Jack and practically pushed him out the door. ‘Don’t come back until it’s safely locked up!’
Jack came around the side of the school, acutely conscious of everyone watching him. Cornelia stopped digging at the wood the moment he appeared and waddled over to him.
‘All aboard,’ she said. ‘All aboard.’
‘What? Cornelia, I can’t understand what you’re saying.’
She opened her wings, flapped mightily, and launched herself onto Jack’s shoulder.
He almost fell over backwards in surprise. Cornelia rocked from side to side, her powerful claws digging into his shirt and not letting go.
‘What are you doing?’ Jack asked her.
‘Shake a leg,’ she said, folding her wings and doing an odd and slightly painful dance on his shoulder.
‘You want me to take you somewhere?’
‘Rourke!’
‘I’m not allowed to take you to the estate. I’m at school.’
But her dance got only weirder – she shuffled from foot to foot and pushed one knobbly leg into his face.
‘Everyone is watching, Cornelia. Wait . . . is that what you’re talking about?’
Jack had forgotten the tiny metal ring attached to Cornelia’s left ankle. She was waving it under his nose, trying to get him to look at it.
Jack gingerly took her leg in his hands. She didn’t protest, and she kept her claws carefully away from the palm of his hand so she wouldn’t scratch him.
There was a piece of very thin paper tucked into the ring. He pulled it out and delicate
ly unfolded it, expecting a note or even – his heart pounded – another clue, perhaps more of the treasure poem Kyle had recited.
Instead, it was a page from a dictionary, with a hole in one corner where Cornelia’s beak had gripped it.
‘Did you take this from Rodeo Dave’s shop?’ he asked her.
‘Rourke!’ She tapped the page with her beak.
‘Rennie must have folded it for you. Which means you’re trying to tell us something again.’
He scanned the page. It came from the T section of the dictionary. The word twister leaped out at him.
‘Hey,’ he said, ‘that’s a secret. You’re not supposed to tell people.’
‘Rourke!’ She tapped the page again. ‘Rourke!’
‘I know, but what does that have to do with anything?’
She tapped so hard that her beak slashed the page and almost cut Jack’s thumb, making him drop the paper onto the ground. She threw up her wings and squawked in frustration.
Jack sympathised. It was frustrating, constantly banging up against this block in communication. Cornelia mainly talked in nautical phrases, probably picked up from the captain of a whaling ship long ago. It was lucky, he supposed, that she wasn’t singing rude sea shanties. Maybe it was caused by some kind of trauma – a throwback to an earlier phase of life, brought on by what she had seen the night Young Master Rourke died – which would be understandable but was not terribly helpful.
‘I don’t know what you’re trying to tell me,’ he said, ‘but I know my dad had nothing to do with what happened to your old master. He just couldn’t have. Still, I don’t think you’re lying or trying to trick us – and you’re definitely not Evil. Just a bit destructive sometimes.’
He picked up the torn piece of paper and put it in his pocket.
‘One of us is wrong.’
Cornelia headbutted him on the nose. The message this time was unmistakable.
You are.
‘We have to figure this out, Cornelia,’ Jack said, ‘but I’m supposed to be at school. If I don’t go back in, I’ll get into trouble. Why don’t you go home and we’ll try again later?’
