THIRTEEN

From Maree Mallory’s Thornlady Directory, file twenty-six

I’m entering this quite late at night, after I left the publishers’ parties and dragged Nick away with me before he got too drunk. One of the parties must still be going on. I can hear distant drunken hooting, and somewhere there’s just been a huge crash of broken glass. Someone turned the wrong way at a corner and tried to walk through a mirror probably.

Actually I left because a) my fabulous Nordic type wasn’t at any of them (Wendy was hunting for him too); b) Rupert is furious with me; and c) Janine came in while I was sitting on the floor between Nick and Wendy and bitched about what a sight we looked. She can talk. She was wearing a black thing with a golden snake wrapped round it that made her look like an advanced version of one of Zinka’s pictures. The snake had two heads and one head was—well anyway, I couldn’t stand any more and came away.

But I really meant to write down the extraordinary thing this afternoon.

What happened was that Nick was desperate to talk to Rupert—the Prat—about computer games. “Desperate” is an understatement. Nick wouldn’t let me do anything else but help him find and snabble Rupert Venables. Of course we couldn’t find him at first. Then we ran him down in the bar—naturally at the precise moment he got caught by the dreadful Tansy-Ann. He was with her for ages.

Nick kept saying we should go and rescue Rupert, why didn’t we? He said we would earn the man’s undying gratitude. And I told him he had no idea what Tansy-Ann was like. She was quite capable of catching us and holding us in thrall too. And even Nick agreed she did look a bit that way. So we sat and waited. Somebody bought me some Real Ale because they said I looked as if I needed it—I blame that news sheet again—and Nick got bought a Coke he didn’t like. And we watched Rupert avoid having his back massaged by Tansy-Ann and get his hands squeezed instead, while Tansy-Ann pushed her beak into his face and talked for a good hour. I was getting almost sorry for the Prat, when Nick and I looked up after not looking for a second or so. And Rupert was gone. Tansy-Ann was alone, looking startled.

“Told you so,” said Nick. He had done no such thing. “He’s just like me. I can always get away from people if I want to. He’s probably in the gents.”

He wasn’t. Nick went in and looked. So we hunted all over the hotel again.

This time we found him with Mervin Thurless, but not until we’d hunted through all the downstairs places and most of the public parts of the first floor—not to speak of asking everyone we met. Rick Corrie went bounding past and sent us up to the first floor. Someone else sent us down again, where we met Wendy, who said she wouldn’t know Rupert if he came up and hit her. Then a great huge man with a fringe of black beard round his face and FANGS! written on his T-shirt came up and slammed into Wendy and hugged her. It made a truly massive embrace. And he told us over Wendy’s shoulder that Rupert the Mage was in Ops looking for Mervin Thurless. So there we went, and a man in battle fatigues who was trying to canoodle with a carroty girl told us wearily that he’d only just come on shift, try the Press Room. So we did that. And got handed another news sheet full of stuff about Uncle Ted pinching ideas from Mervin Thurless, and Tina Gianetti refusing to have both of them together on the same panel ever again.

“I bet he did take stuff from Thurless,” Nick said, reading all about it as we went along the corridor.

“I’m sure he did,” I said. “He told me he couldn’t bear to see ideas lying around not being used properly. And I wouldn’t trust a person like Thurless to use an idea properly if it was handed to him on a scroll from Heaven.”

“It says here,” said Nick, “that Thurless is running the Writers’ Workshop tomorrow in place of Wendy Willow. I should think she’d be better at it, wouldn’t you?”

By this time it was quite late. People were appearing changed into fine clothes ready for the parties. Maxim Hough hurried past wearing a velvet patchwork jacket, beside two achingly slender girls in glittery dresses. And coming towards us were two fabulous women in long tight black leather dresses that laced up all over with red thongs. It took me a moment to recognize that they were two of the long-haired people with the baby. Their hair was piled up in glossy hairdos and their false eyelashes stuck out a good inch.

Nick recognized them at once. “Wow!” he said. They were delighted. They struck poses and Nick admired them. “What have you done with the baby?” he asked.

“Larry’s looking after him,” said the one on the left. “Loretta, I mean.”

“She’s got ever so maternal since she changed sex,” the one on the right explained.

Nick became speechless. I asked them rather despairingly whether they’d seen Rupert.

“Rupert the Mage?” they said in their lovely husky voices. One of them added, “I love that man—he’s so straight!” and the other one said that he (or she) had seen Rupert going into the Filk Room, just along there. Then they went swaying off—they both had shiny black boots on with six-inch heels. I wondered how they could walk at all, in those tight black leather skirts as well.

Nick said, “I know one of them has to be a man! Can you tell which?”

“Darned if I know!” I said. “They’re both so beautiful. But that baby’s surely having a weird upbringing!”

Nick said, in a vague way, “All upbringings are weird.” He had his con map out, looking for this Filk Room. “It’s down the end of this corridor.”

It was a medium-sized empty room with bits of sound equipment strewn about in it, mostly flexes snaking all over the floor. Rupert Venables and Mervin Thurless were sitting on the only two chairs in there, talking deeply. But Thurless swung round and jutted his beard at us as we put our faces round the door. When he saw it was me, he looked savage.

“So you think you’re going to take this room away from me as well, do you?” he snarled. “Go away. Go and voodoo-dance somewhere else!”

We shut the door hurriedly and went and sat by the wall in a sort of lobby outside. Nick said, “It’s all right. We can catch Rupert the Mage as soon as he comes out.”

I wailed, “Oh dear! It was his room Rick Corrie gave me!”

“It’s not your fault,” Nick said.

We sat for some time. Nick was quite happy. He got out a notebook and set to perfecting his Wantchester game, bringing it up to Bristolia standard, he said. I was pretty restive. It was an unrestful spot. Waiters and waitresses kept coming out through a door disguised as a mirror, carrying glasses and boxes of bottles for the publishers’ parties. They all seemed to be talking about music. The waitress who had brought Nick his cornflakes hurried by saying, “It’s not that I mind music—it’s not that. I just want to know where it’s coming from.”

And the waiter who had brought the coffee said, “Yeah, I know. It’s creepy. Music in the air.”

A few minutes after they had gone, I heard music too. It was coming from behind the closed door of the Filk Room. It didn’t strike me as creepy, but it seemed unlikely that Rupert Venables and Mervin Thurless had both suddenly started playing guitars. “Nick…” I said.

Nick looked up, listened and said, “Oh no!” The guitars had now been joined by a sweet soprano song.

We both jumped up and Nick tore open the Filk Room door. The three women alone in there looked rather startled. “We were just having a bit of a rehearsal,” said the one who had been singing. “The filking doesn’t really start until eight.”

Nick spotted the door at the other end of the room, where the women must have come in and Rupert and Thurless gone out. “Sorry,” he said, sprinting for it. “Looking for someone.” We crossed the room like an army crossing the stage, with the women gaping at us, and crashed out the other side into a shabby passage where the service stairs were. Nick seemed to have no doubt that Rupert had recently gone up those stairs. He went up them at a gallop and I panted behind, thinking that, even if Rupert had gone that way, he was long gone by now. There was a fire door at the top, saying it led to the Second Floor. Nick pushed it open, looked, and beckoned me on with a large excited sweep of his arm.

I panted up to him to see a long corridor ahead, with the usual mirrors at the corners, and Rupert Venables just turning left at that end. We raced after him. I was almost as frustrated as Nick by then. I’d wasted a whole afternoon and I was determined to catch him this time. We whirled round that corner, me on Nick’s heels, only seconds behind Rupert.

It was only when we had run some yards down a passage lined with mirrors, but the glass all faint and dark, like the reflections of reflections, that I had a clear memory of the hotel corridor and knew something was very wrong. There hadn’t been a cross-corridor. There never was this side of the hotel. There was always only a right-hand turn. There was no way we could have turned left without crashing into the wall. But we had.

Nick realized all this too, a second later. “Where are we?”

“In the soup,” I said. “Run. Keep him in sight.”

Rupert Venables was still ahead, calmly walking along there in the dim distance. I was fairly sure that if we lost him we were lost for good. If I looked over my shoulder—and I did, about six times, in increasing panic—there was, well, not the hotel. A sort of fuzzy strangeness. Nick looked once, too. Then he seized my wrist and we ran. And that was another thing about this strange experience. Rupert Venables just walked, a bit jauntily, swinging along as if he knew where he was going, but not walking fast. We fair pelted. But he was always the same distance away.

I was going to type, “It was hard not to panic,” but the fact is we did panic. Running and running and not making any difference is like your worst dreams. Hot and horrified and nightmarish, we ran. And shortly it was exactly like my worst dreams, because there, just to one side, was the bush with my thornlady in it—or that she was part of, or whatever. She said to me, sneeringly, “What good do you think this is doing you?”

“Oh shut up!” I told her.

I don’t think Nick heard her or knew she was there. He went trampling and crunching through one side of her bush, bellowing, “Rupert the Mage! WAIT!” with his voice roaring and cracking with panic. The bush whipped about with indignation. She was furious. But I had no attention for that, because Nick was dragging away at my wrist and Rupert Venables just walked on and didn’t seem to hear us yelling.

We seemed to be mostly out in the open air by then, on a hillside of steep slanting banks, going downwards ahead of us. But there were regular dreadful places where it was all fuzzy sliding instead, where what was almost hillside, but not quite, moved giddily this way and that. There was hillside sliding overhead in those places, and we had to duck under, with our stomachs squirming with vertigo, and then jump over the fuzzy slidings underfoot, because we neither of us dared touch those bits. And the relief of getting to grassy slope again would have been inexpressible, except that Rupert was always just that bit ahead and we had to go hurtling, shouting, ducking and jumping down after him again. In the grassy bits, the sky kept changing, from cloudy to blue, to near-dark, to sunset, and back to blue with white clouds. It made me feel sick.

The nightmare ended in a lovely Spring afternoon. Rupert jumped down ahead of us, and we jumped down after him, from what seemed to be the bank of a hedge, into a dirt road. He walked slantwise across the road to a shabby white gate in the hedge opposite. We scuttled over after him for dear life.

“Stop! Wait!” Nick croaked.

“Help!” I added.

He had his hand on the gate latch, but he spun round and stared at us. I have never seen him look so utterly outraged and angry, not even when he interrupted the Witchy Dance. “What the hell are you two doing here?” he said. His voice had the sort of cold clank to it of someone chipping stones.

Nick quailed. “I—er … I wanted to speak to you,” he quavered.

“We sort of followed you by mistake,” I apologized. “We did shout, but you didn’t seem to hear. And we didn’t dare lose you.”

Rupert said nothing. He simply did that thing of taking hold of his left lens and pinning us with it, like vile germs on a gold-rimmed slide. I began to get angry myself at that. I remember thinking it was ridiculous, us all humble and him glaring at us for something we couldn’t help, in a spot like that. There were violets and primroses growing on the banks by the gate, and a clump of tiny daffodils to one side. I could hear distant, gentle country noises, sheep bleating and hens clucking and so on, and it seemed quite out of place and stupid for him to stand glaring and blaming us for being there.

Nick was completely crushed by the lens treatment. That surprises me whenever I think of it. Until then I’ve never known Master Nick crushed by anything. He said, “Sorry!” and looked like a dog with its tail between its legs.

That made me even angrier. “I’m sorry too,” I said, “but it was an accident. Nick wanted to talk to you about computer games, so we ran after you. There’s no call to fry us on your lens for it!”

Rupert breathed in. I could see he was going to say something that would blast me. But the gate opened out of his hand before he could speak and a tall, untidy, farmerish man in green wellies looked out at us all. “Hello, Rupe!” he said. “What’s going on here?”

“Oh—hello, Will,” Rupert said, rather let down and wind-out-of-sails. “You seem to have some uninvited guests, is what’s going on. Nick and Maree followed me here somehow.”

The man Will grinned sweetly. I could tell he knew Rupert was furious. “You weren’t invited either,” he said, “but that doesn’t mean I’m not glad to see you.”

“It’s not the same!” Rupert said. He didn’t exactly stamp his foot or even yell particularly, but the way he said it was doing both those things, and I somehow understood from it that Will was his elder brother and had had years of experience in winding Rupert up.

“Is your name Venables too?” I asked Will, testing my theory.

“That’s right.” He grinned even more sweetly. “Do you know my brother well?”

“NO,” Nick, Rupert and I all said in chorus.

“Shame,” said Will. “He quite often improves on acquaintance. Why don’t you all come in?” He held the gate open invitingly and we all three trooped in past him.

Beyond it was a low white house against a hill of ploughed fields. I could see the roofs of quite a large village at the top of those fields. But I didn’t pay much attention to the view, because the space beyond the gate, which was a garden of sorts, was just such a mass of creatures. The majority were pale fluffy chicks, all running about and cheeping. They sounded like a chorus of mobile phones. They must have been several different kinds of chick, because the adult birds goose-stepping about amongst them were some strange sort of hen and peculiar ducks and a number of tall grey birds with long pink legs. But there was a peacock too, which flew up into a bare tree with a shriek and a whacking of wings that made Nick jump and clutch hold of me. A large silky dog appeared then, out of nowhere, pushing her nose lovingly into Rupert’s hand—and then doing the same quickly to Will, in case he was offended—and she was followed by four cats and a whole gang of kittens. Meanwhile a flock of white creatures—I couldn’t tell if they were odd sheep or unusual goats—was coming galloping from mid-distance baying with interest. Since they had fairly sizeable horns, Nick was not happy to see them and got behind me quickly.

But that was as nothing to Nick’s dismay when the door of the house burst open and a string of little girls—six of them, I gathered later—came rushing out screaming. “Rupert! Rupert’s here!” and flung themselves in a mass upon their uncle. The smallest had come out in such a hurry that she was only wearing her vest. Two of the kids had heads of hair even bushier than mine. I could see they got it from Will. He had bushy hair that wriggled. He was standing there grinning broadly at our reaction to his livestock, and he more or less laughed when the inrush of little girls caused Nick to yelp, “Oh help!” and retreat towards the gate.

I would have expected Rupert to behave the same way, but he surprised me by greeting his nieces as enthusiastically as they greeted him. He let himself be grabbed and dangled from and then dragged off to see the new swing and slide, looking as if he loved every minute. Before he had been dragged many yards, though, a fantastically good-looking woman in jodhpurs and pink bedroom slippers appeared at the house door waving a small pair of red leggings.

“Vendela’s trousers!” she shouted. “Put them on her, Rupert.”

She threw them and Rupert caught them, laughing. Then he was dragged away, scattering chicks and kittens and halting the charge of the sheep-goats, who stopped dead when Rupert and the children all rushed past their noses. The woman came up the path towards us, smiling, to find out who we were.

“My wife, Carina,” Will said. It was like someone saying, “And here are the Crown Jewels.”

“We’re Nick and Maree Mallory,” I explained, “and we’re here by mistake, I’m afraid.”

“I’m just in the middle of getting a meal,” Carina said. “You’ll stay and have something with us, won’t you?”

“Rupert won’t like it,” I said. “But—”

“Rupert can lump it,” said Will. “Have we got enough food, Carey?”

“Eggs to burn,” Carina called, on her way back to the house. “Sponduley and Cash both started laying today, as well as all the quacks.”

“That’s all right then,” said Will. “I hope you both like eggs.”

“Yes, and we didn’t have any lunch,” Nick said.

“Then that’s settled then,” said Will. Then, in the most natural, casual way, he took us on a tour of the livestock while he got out of us what had happened and then gave us an explanation (which we certainly wouldn’t have got out of Rupert). I had been dying to take a look at the strange hens, not to speak of the birds with the long pink legs. Will trudged casually in among the little running, cheeping birds in his great boots, picking one up here, and another there, and upending them for me. “A quack chick,” he said. “Female, look. Most of these are Buktaru quacks. Good layers. Nice feathers too. See, this one’s getting her blue tailfeathers already. She’ll be different blues all over when she’s fledged. We sell a lot of these, but we make pets of the sollyhens. Here. This one’s a sollyhen—unless it’s a cock. They’re hard to sex at this age. What do you think?”

I peered at the upside down rear end of the placid yellow handful he was holding out to me and mustered all my despised vet-learning. “It’s a cock,” I said.

“Yes, I think you’re right,” he agreed.

I could tell I had gone up in his estimation, so I risked saying, “But I never heard of a sollyhen. Are they the ones that look like herons?”

“No, those are butes,” he told me. “You don’t have those in your world, or sollies either. Butes are a bit like guinea-fowl to eat, but they’re much quieter to keep. They only shout if there’s a fox near. When they shout, we turn Petra out.” He patted the head of the silky dog. “Petra eats foxes for breakfast, don’t you, lady? Sollies, now, they’re a bit like bantams, but they have lots of these little spotted feathers. And their combs are orange. Come and see the goats.”

He trudged away into an orchard-like section of the garden, followed by Petra, followed by me, followed by several butes, followed by Nick, looking bored and traumatized. The white, horned flock did not please Nick, although he pleased them. They bustled and butted around us, then concentrated on Nick and left drool on his jeans.

“They’re very intelligent,” Will observed, “and perverse as hell. They’re teasing you, Nick. Look pleased to see them and they’ll leave you alone.”

I was fascinated by the creatures, so of course they avoided me. They were so like sheep, except for the mad goats’ eyes. Will told me they kept them for milk and for wool. We caught one and ran our hands through the silky, curly pelt, which he said made the most wonderful sweaters. Beautiful. I felt myself relaxing, in a way I hadn’t for years. I remembered all over again why I had decided to become a vet. The air of this place had something to do with it. It was wonderful—even laden with goat-smell—fresh, mild and light. Being in the hotel all those hours had given me a headache I hadn’t noticed until then, when the air melted it away. I think it was having the same effect on Nick—unless it was the distant sound of Rupert being mobbed on the other side of the orchard. That seemed to please Nick, and it certainly pleased me.

Anyway, as we went on into the vegetable plot, where wire runs held about a hundred rabbits, I told Will how I hoped to be a vet and he told me that he had almost trained as one too. He said they lived off the land here as far as possible. Then Nick and I both told him about the nightmare way we had followed Rupert here.

“I thought you both looked pretty upset,” Will said. “Transit from world to world can be unsettling, even if you know what you’re doing. And Rupert wouldn’t have been able to hear you shouting—or see you, unless he was deliberately looking. He was a universe ahead of you the whole time, you see.”

“You mean,” Nick said challengingly, “that there really are other worlds?”

“Infinite numbers,” Will said cheerfully. “This may look like England here, but it isn’t. It’s a country called Albion, on a world—well, they call it The World, the people who live here, but we Magids call it Thule.”

“What,” I said, “are Magids?”

“So Rupert hasn’t mentioned it to you?” Will asked, unhitching a gate to a hillside paddock. “I’m surprised. Or perhaps not. Earth is far enough Naywards that you have to be fairly cautious who you tell. The ones who don’t believe you try to lock you up, and the ones who do try to exploit you financially. But I should have thought he could have told you two. My brother’s a bit of a stickler sometimes.”

The paddock contained a family of donkeys and several horses. We held the rest of the conversation walking in among big grey and brown bodies, pulling stiff ears, smacking necks or stroking large pulpy noses, and pausing from time to time to comfort Petra, who was convinced she was far more interesting than a. mere horse. At least, I did all this. Nick found the horses too big and the donkeys highly unpredictable and contented himself with petting Petra.

“Right. Magids,” said Will. “I am a Magid, Rupert is a Magid and so is our brother Simon. It’s actually fairly unusual, having three in the same family like this, but we all had the correct abilities and Stan, our sponsor, said he wasn’t going to let it worry him when three vacancies came up, one after the other. There are always a fixed number of Magids, you see.”

“How many?” Nick wanted to know.

“Good question,” Will said, digging in the pockets of his old green coat for sugar. “Old beliefs put the number at thirty-six or thirty-eight, but that was before it was confirmed that the number of worlds really is infinite. We think there may be as many Magids as there are worlds. But I only know forty or so. But then Rupert probably knows a slightly different forty. Simon will know another very different forty. That’s because he’s in a world a good long way off from here.”

“So there’s one of you on every different world, is there?” I asked, wondering whether to point out that the fawn-coloured donkey was lame.

“No, she’s not lame, she’s just faking it for sugar, aren’t you, Milesia?” Will said. He and the fawn donkey went forehead to forehead, possibly thrashing the matter out telepathically. It seems certain to me that one Magid ability at least is a measure of telepathy. But Will was talking to us at the same time. “No,” he said. “We live where we like, as long as we can conveniently get to the places where we’re needed. Some worlds have ten Magids. Earth does, because it’s comfortable. Thule only has me. Then there’s the Koryfonic Empire. That has none—everyone hates the place, all eleven worlds of it.”

“But what do you do exactly?” Nick said.

“Not easy to put into words,” Will said, posting a second lump of sugar into Milesia. “No, that’s your lot, girl. Basically we’re people who can control the currents that run through the worlds. Time currents, space currents. We can push history the way it needs to go, or people, or things, if necessary, and you can see that means we have to have pretty strict rules to—”

“Are you talking about politics?” Nick said, suspicious and sceptical. “Or some kind of magic?”

“Both,” Will said, after thinking about it. “But I don’t think any of us are politicians. It’s too hard to stay honest. And we have to be honest. No, we mostly work with magic. There are so many different kinds of magic, though, that half the time I’m not sure what I’m using to work with. It’s quite unusual for one of us to stand up and summon a thunderstorm, you know. We’d only do that if there was nothing else we could do. Mostly we do the quiet things. You’d probably find it quite disappointing if you saw me at it.”

“We saw one of you go from world to world,” Nick said. “That was fairly striking.”

“And it was meant to be secret,” I said. “Why? And who controls you, or do you just do things?”

“Earth is what we call Naywards,” Will explained, “which means sceptical—like Nick here—and averse to being pushed about, and very antipathetic to anything that can be called magic. Magids do tend to be secretive on Earth, though a lot of us come from Earth, because you have to be damn strong to work magic there. If we weren’t secret there, we’d disable half the things we try to do. As to what we do, well, we have a fairly wide brief to keep things running on the right lines, and we work largely on our own initiative, but we are directed. Each group of worlds has a Senior Magid to keep the rest of us in order, and they hand down what are called Intentions. From Up There.” He pointed to the pale blue Spring sky above us, and then began to trudge back to the paddock gate, avoiding Nick’s disbelieving stare—and maybe mine too.

I kept up with Will and so did the horses, hoping for sugar again. “Look,” I said, squeezing between the bay and the grey, “do you seriously mean that? Is what they do Up There a good thing? My Dad has cancer. From out of the blue. From up there. If they do exist, they either don’t care, or they’re pretty vile.”

Will stopped by the gate, waiting for Nick to nerve himself up to come through the horses after us. “Cancer’s on our level,” he said, “the human or animal level. Part of the conditions of existence, like you tearing your nice jacket or stepping on a mouse. Even they can’t do much about that sort of thing, though you can ask, and they will try. They mostly deal in larger units. And their aims are right and good in the long term. Promise.”

“How do you know?” I demanded.

“They explain it to you when you get sponsored as a Magid,” Will said, “and again from time to time. It’s part of the wisdom you take on when you take on the job. You swear to work for the good of the worlds, and you get told things in return.”

“What things?” Nick asked. He had come sidling up along the hedge.

Will laughed at that. “What we call the deep secrets,” he said.

“So you can’t tell us?” I said. I felt scornful and disappointed.

“Not,” said Will, “in so many words. But some of them are things you more or less know anyway. If I were to tell you some, you might laugh—I know I did—because a lot of the secrets are half there in well-known or childish things, like nursery rhymes or fairy stories. I kid you not! One of our jobs is to put those things around and make sure they’re well enough known for people to put them together in the right way when the time comes. Or again,” he said, swinging the gate open, “some of the secrets are only in parts. These are the dangerous secrets. I’ve got the memorized parts of at least seventy of them. If another Magid has need of my piece of a secret, he or she can come and ask me, and if the need is real enough, then I put my part together with his or hers. It acts as a check. We only do that in an emergency.”

“Is that why your brother’s here? To ask you a piece of a secret?” I asked.

Will laughed again. “More likely he needs a favour. I’ll find out after the girls have had their go at him. Let’s go in. I want my tea.”

I suppose Rupert did get to speak to Will at some time during that crowded and noisy meal. I wouldn’t know. I was busy helping Carina put at least one egg in front of each child and then holding six conversations at once while I shared out bread and tomatoes. My fingernails caused much comment. Lion-headed Venetia wanted to know why they were so long. Smooth-haired Vanessa demanded to be told why they grew so yellow. Fair-head Vanda speculated that I must hurt myself when I scratched, and her carrot-haired twin Viola wondered why her own nails always broke before they were anything like as long as mine. (Yes, they were all V. Venables. Nice idea now, but there’ll be problems when they’re teenagers and getting letters from boys.) Little-lionhead Valentina was the one who kept shrilling to be told what use my nails were.

“Endlessly useful,” I told her. “I’ll show you.” And I caused much amazement by nipping the top off her egg by digging my nails through its shell. Then of course I had to do the same for five more eggs. In addition, I acquired a kitten on each knee every time I sat down. My good jeans are all pecked and pulled on the thighs now.

We all sat round a crowded table in a room with a low ceiling and sunset light coming in through a window lined with geraniums in pots. I enjoyed it, but poor Nick was not happy. “Free-range livestock,” he said to me feelingly. “Free-range cats, free-range kids! I wish I was in a cage.” Well, I know how I felt in my aunt’s house, so I shouldn’t blame him.

And, just so that I wouldn’t think Carina and Will were living in any sort of a superhuman idyll, they contrived to have a short loud spat halfway through tea. I don’t know how it started, but Carina suddenly screamed, “Oh don’t be so damned superior, Will! Stop looking so smug! Rupert’s quite right!”

To which Will roared, “Bloody hell, Carey He’s my brother!”

I could see Rupert at the far end of the table trying to look as if this had nothing to do with him. Nick looked alarmed. His parents never shout. But the six kids went on chatting at the tops of their voices. I could see they were quite used to it. Venetia grinned at me and yelled in my ear, “You should see them when they throw eggs! It’s really funny. We get under the table then.”

The row passed. Rupert eventually stood up and said we’d got to get back to the hotel. I made some comment that it would be polite to help with the washing-up. Rupert gave me one of his stony glares. So did Nick. Dishwashers were invented for people like Nick, but I could see Carina and Will didn’t have one. Will said, in his most expansive, benevolent way, that the dishes were his chore—and then contrived to look gentle and tragic so that I knew he was being saintly.

Will, and Carina too, were both covering up for the way that Rupert was still so obviously furious with us. Carina said she’d really enjoyed meeting us. So we were all three able to go up the garden, where the various fowls were all in or under bushes, roosting for the night, and out through the gate, seeming as if we’d taken part in a normal social visit. But nothing really disguised the fact that Rupert was utterly pissed off with the pair of us.

Out in the road the last of the daylight seemed to reflect up from the white surface. Rupert glowered at us in the gloaming. He said, in his clipped, stone-chipping, furious voice, “Don’t expect to be able to babble about this jaunt to everyone at the convention.”

“We wouldn’t dream of it!” I said.

He turned his white-reflecting spectacles on me. It was worse than seeing his eyes. “You’re right,” he said. “You won’t be able even to dream of it. Now, in order to make sure you get back less stupidly dangerously than you came, you’d better hang on to each other and to me.” He held out his hand to Nick. Somehow he made it plain that he could bear to touch Nick—just about—but not me.

We meekly took hold. I think we both felt he was justified. After all, we had intruded on his private, family life, even if we hadn’t meant to. He towed us up the bank opposite—not in exactly the same place as we arrived: I saw a luminous-looking clump of primroses that I had not seen when we came—and out on to the hillside with the fuzzy places. It was incredibly hard work, climbing the grassy banks in between the fuzz. Nick and I were both puffing and scrambling and using my free hand to help us up, though Rupert marched on ahead, dragging the pair of us as if there was nothing to it. And it was somehow nothing like as alarming as when we came. The sliding misty spaces between bank and bank were hardly there: we could step over easily from one slope to the next. I couldn’t help seeing that there was something Nick and I had not done quite right on the way out, and I tried as I clambered to work out what Rupert was doing that we hadn’t. I think I see.

It wasn’t straight climbing, just as it wasn’t straight rushing downhill when we came. We had been doing something, Nick and I, that moved us from world to world, and though I couldn’t possibly describe it, I would know how to do it again. It’s like the way you never forget how to whistle or ride a bicycle once you learn how it should feel. And I’m afraid I’m determined to do it again. Nick hasn’t said anything to me, but I know he’s just as determined, in spite of what Rupert said. It’s like being hooked.

Quite soon and quite suddenly, we came off the hillside into the corridor of dim mirrors. I nearly stopped as a realization struck me. “Oh!” I said. “The Thornlady wasn’t here this time. What a relief!”

“Don’t stop! Don’t let go!” Rupert snapped. “You’re still somewhere quite different. At the very least, you’d be stranded for life. You don’t seem to realize what a stupid, dangerous thing you went and did!”

“But we got there,” Nick panted. He hates being told off.

“Because you were following me,” Rupert retorted. “It was rank idiocy. Don’t dare do it again!”

“Why was it idiocy?” Nick said.

“Because you could have thrown several worlds out of kilter, as well as getting yourselves killed,” Rupert snapped. “If you’d happened to have stopped between world and world, you would have fallen in two halves. If you’d got the transit wrong, you could have weakened the wall between universes. All sorts of things. And I’m not telling you any more. Just take my word.”

“Mysteries. Secrets,” Nick muttered disgustedly.

We suddenly popped into the hotel corridor, as he muttered it. Rupert let go of him and rounded on him. “Be thankful there are mysteries!” he said. “They keep you safe in your silly ignorant little life!”

That got me mad. I could feel my finger pushing at my glasses. I said, “Oh yes? And who keeps everyone ignorant? Rupert Venables, the secret ruler of the world!”

I think it was the unforgivable thing to say—well, I knew it might be, or I wouldn’t have said it. Rupert sort of drew himself up. He didn’t even pin me with his lens. He just stood. Icily. “I don’t know exactly what Will said to you,” he said, “but you couldn’t have misunderstood it more!” Then he swung round and went stalking away down the corridor.

The heavy, scented, indoors air of the hotel seemed to close round me as if it was trying to drown me. I stared after his angrily marching back, wishing I hadn’t said that. I wish it even more now.

Heigh-ho. I think the only thing I really mind about is my little fat Dad having cancer. I don’t even mind about Robbie any more. I just wish I wasn’t me. That’s all.