What’s your name?’ called Jack to the girl, but every time the girl replied, her answer was caught ‘ by the windy clouds and carried away.
But Jack knew she was the Captive.
And he knew she was the Golden Maiden.
But he wanted to know her name.
In the laboratory, the Magus had made ready. The fearful heat of the furnace had caused some of the boys to faint, and Robert was reviving William and Anselm with water. The two giant alembics bubbled and boiled and filled with steam. The Magus ran from one to another, drawing off a silver liquid that immediately hardened into a solid silver ball. Yet when William dropped one of these small round balls it splintered into a thousand tiny replicas of itself, like ball bearings.
The Magus cursed, and sent the boys on their hands and knees to find and collect the tiny drops of mercury.
‘The Spirit Mercurius is essential to the Work,’ shouted the Magus over the boom and boil of the alembics. ‘Lose no part of him, for he is liquid and solid, matter and mind.’
Round and round the laboratory swooped and dived the
Eyebat, but often it threw itself at the skylight, making chattering noises, like a cat when it sees a bird.
And beyond the laboratory, silent and motionless as ever, were the stone boys.
‘Make ready,’ said the Magus, ‘and leave me. The Work is begun . . .’
And the Sunken King turning and turning in his tank like a child in its mother’s womb.
And the Dragon that held the Cinnabar Egg like a world that holds a star.
And the Dark House waiting like a baleful thought.
And now, and now, and now.
‘Woof,’ barked Max at the foot of the shaft. ‘Woof. Woof, Woof.’
Up above Jack heard, and ran from the window and looked down. But it was such a long way down.
‘What are we going to do?’ said Crispis. ‘I wish I was a bird and then I could rescue him.’
Crispis sighed and put down his sunflower, in its pot, on the floor, in the shaft. Then, for no reason that he understood, he went to the vast stone sink that stood in the kitchen, and drew off a jug of water from the water barrel kept beneath. Mistress Split snored on.
Crispis went back to his sunflower and watered it. And it grew – about two feet, all at once.
‘Oh!’ said Crispis. And he watered it once more, and it grew another two feet, and now it had begun to grow its way up into the shaft and up it went, and up it went and up and up and up and up and up and up and up and up.
And Jack suddenly realised that something was coming towards him, and he stood back, and watched, amazed as the sunflower grew into the room.
But it did not stop when it reached the room. What the sunflower did was this: it grew over towards the window, and then and only then, when its top was in the fresh air and the white clouds, did it stop growing.
And then, like the sun itself, the sunflower sprung a great golden head and shone so bright from the window, that a woman polishing a copper pot in the street miles below, saw the light of it beaming, and looked up. ‘Lord,’ she said, ‘the sun so visible, twice in the sky at once! Certainly strange happenings there must be in some place.’
And she hurried inside.
Jack didn’t hesitate. Testing the sturdy stem of the plant just once, he shinned right down it at such a speed that his head went dizzy, and in a few seconds: there he was. Landed in the kitchen on his bottom, and Max standing on him and licking every bit of him and Crispis dancing for joy.
‘It was the Dragon’s sunflower!’ he said.
Jack felt in his pocket and gave Crispis another of the six remaining seeds. ‘Keep it safe in case you need it again,’ he said, and Crispis nodded solemnly and stowed the seed away in his stocking top.
The boys were just tiptoeing across the kitchen when Mistress Split woke up with a vast yawn. There was half a pause of hesitation, then Max bounded into her arm, and in the bounding and the ‘Boojie Boojie Boojie!’ that took up the next half minute, Jack and Crispis slipped out of the door.
‘Where’s Wedge?’ whispered Jack.
‘He’s trying to hatch the coconut you gave him. He’s got a hen the size of a pig,’ said Crispis.
Jack smiled and nodded. Now they had a chance.
Light and silent, the two boys went straight into the cellar.