It was a nest.
Jack nearly fainted with the stench – a strong, thick stench of talons and wings and hunting breath, like an owl, like a kestrel, like a hawk, like a bird of prey.
Jack tried not to breathe, but even with his handkerchief over his mouth the smell was overwhelming. Bird droppings were piled in the corners, mixed with bones and straw and dried leaves.
Feathers and dust, dusty feathers, cobwebby feathers littered the rough floor and layered it, a foot deep. The feathers were crimson and gold. Jack picked one up, wondering at it. There was no window in the room, for the room was really the closed attic of the house, and seemed to run on for miles into the dark, but there was a rough opening in the gable-end wall. Jack went over and leaned out – yes, he was right in the roof, near enough to the stars, and high above the courtyard with the well. He was glad of the sudden rush of fresh air, and sat back in the hacked-out opening, careless of the drop. He gazed into the room.
The desk was the only piece of furniture, the only sign that anything human ever came here. And the desk, unlike everywhere else, was carefully dusted, polished even, with a quill pen made from one of the red and gold feathers, and a jar of red ink. There was an open book on the desk. Jack took a deep breath of clean air and made his way carefully across the room.
The page of the book had a drawing on it, and the drawing was of a phoenix, red and gold, and rising out of a smouldering heap of ashes. Standing by the phoenix was a shining boy. Jack looked at the drawing. The writing was in Latin, but on the open page, someone had written, in English, under the Latin tag:
The Radiant Boy shall free the Phoenix and the Phoenix shall find the City of Gold.
Jack looked closer. At the foot of the page was a drawing of a dragon, and at the top of the page were the spires and domes of the City of Gold.
Jack turned back the pages of the book, and there, to his horror, were drawings of all of the boys he knew – Robert, William, Anselm, Crispis, Peter, Roderick – and of other boys he had never known, and each of them had been carefully ruled through, like a mistake.
Hardly daring, but knowing without knowing what he would find, Jack turned the pages forward, and there was a drawing of himself, and at his head was a kind of halo such as he had seen in pictures of saints. But Jack knew he was no saint. He read the tag under the drawing: The Radiant Boy.
And as Jack looked at the picture of himself, a very odd thing started to happen. Right next to him in the picture, now strong, now faint, appeared a young girl, about his own age. Underneath her was written: The Golden Maiden. He turned the page – there she was, on her own page, holding a jewelled clock in both hands, and looking straight at him. Jack had the strangest feeling that he knew her – that he had always known her, but that was impossible. As he gazed, he said to himself, out loud, not knowing why, but by a strange impulse, ‘Golden Maiden of the Book, if you are in the world as I am in the world, find me, help me. I am calling you. I am the Radiant Boy.’
And he had a clear image of himself standing in front of a door and that the door opened.
This is a mystery, thought Jack. But I must keep my mind on my task.
The Egg, he must find the Egg. A bird would have an egg, but where would it be?
Somewhere soft and safe, thought Jack, and began sifting through the feathers on the floor.
Nothing, nothing, nothing.
If I were a bird, thought Jack, where would I hide my precious egg?
Then Jack looked up. High, that was where a bird would hide an egg, high.
Sure enough, in the rafters, there was a kind of woven basket, long and shallow, like a fisherman’s flat basket for herrings. Jack climbed on the desk, and using all his strength, he pulled himself up on the roof rafter, and dangling there, half his body hauled up, and the other half swinging, reached into the nest. At that very moment, he heard an unmistakable flapping noise coming towards the room.
The Phoenix!
Jack let go of the rafter as if it had stung him, dropped on all fours on to the desk, blew out the candle, and dived under the desk in the dark.
For a moment or two nothing happened, except for the flapping noise swooping and retreating beyond the wall. Then with a great rush of air the bird landed in its nest.
All Jack could see were strong scaly golden legs and cruel capable feet.
The bird stopped quite still in the middle of the room, then with a short hop it jumped up on to the chair behind the desk. Now, terrified as he was, Jack could see its crimson plumage and its steep strong throat.
The bird seemed to be turning the pages of the book, then, with its beak, it took the quill pen and began to write. Jack could hear the scratch, scratch, scratching of the nib.
He wanted to sneeze. More than life itself he wanted to sneeze. The feathers were in his nose. He must think of a world where everyone was born without noses and therefore could not sneeze. He held his poor nose tight between his finger and thumb, and felt his whole body cover itself in sweat at the effort of not sneezing.
Just as he thought he would either die by sneezing because the bird would find and kill him, or die of suffocation by not sneezing, the scratching sound of the quill ceased, and the bird, without a pause, spread its wings and glided effortlessly across the room and out of the window.
Jack let out such a sneeze that every single feather on the floor lifted and settled again. He sneezed so hard, that Crispis, dozing patiently on the landing below, was knocked off his feet, and had to get up again, which he did, to find that William had gone . . .