by Jane Yolen
“But Molly can’t give him that,” Mom wailed.
From the doorway Peter moaned , “Blood,” he said.
... and burnings. Jennifer remembered the rest and shuddered.
“He wants the map,” said Gran. “There is much of his power invested in it.”
“Then why didn’t he just take it?” Mom said. “Why did he have to take my little girl?”
“For a trade,” said Da.
“You canna just take an object of power,” Gran explained.
“It must be given.” Jennifer said the words before she knew that she knew them.
Da nodded. “And I said she has the magic, Gwenfhar.”
“Aye. But can she wield it?” Gran asked.
Jennifer gasped. “I don’t have—” but Mom’s scream cut right across whatever else she was going to say.
“Just give him the map!” Mom hadn’t meant to scream the words, but they came out that way all the same. “Just give him the damned map.” She began to sob silently.
Gran shook her head. “We dinna dare. The last time he had the map, from my own father, there was war and famine and—”
“There’s always war and famine,” said Peter from the door. “And always will be. Magic has nothing to do with it.”
Jennifer was surprised at the withering despair in Peter’s voice. He’d never spoken like that before. She had thought, as his twin, that she knew all his moods. But not this one.
“Och, laddie,” said Da, “there’s more to this than you ken.”
“I know my litde sister’s been snatched up by some ... some maniac, and all he really wants is this map.” In four big steps Peter was back in the room and had snatched up the map from the table. “While you all sit gabbling on about magic, I mean to give it to him.”
“You canna,” Da said.
“You will na,” Gran said.
“Yes, I will” Peter cried and, turning, was in the living room and heading toward the stairs.
“Where’s he going?” Pop cried desperately.
“To the attic,” Jennifer said. She’d known before he started where he was going, and knew, too, that she had to go with him.
“He’s going into trouble,” said Gran. “Best have the cards,” she called after Jennifer. “They’ve some meaning I dinna understand, but have them anyway.”
And Jennifer, not understanding why she took the time to come back into the kitchen, picked up the two decks of Patience cards, and then ran out of the room.
***
As she went up the stairs two at a time, Jennifer expected her mother and father, and even Gran and Da, to follow. She expected them to phone the police or to get a gun or at the very least to offer her something for ... What was the word Gran had used the day before?
Protection.
But as she went, she heard Gran cry out to the others, “Leave them. They have the twinning, which Michael Scot does not know, for they do not have the look of doubles. It will serve them well.”
Even if she had not heard Gran, Jennifer would already have known with perfect clarity that no one was going to help them. Peter and she were on their own in this.
But then she realized something even more important. Gran had said an object of power could not be taken. But Peter had taken it from the table.
So it must have been given.
To them.
By Gran.
Which meant Gran expected them to do what the grown-ups could not.
Clutching the Patience cards to her chest, Jennifer cried out in a voice that was hopeful and terrified in equal measure, “Wait for me, Peter! Wait for me!”
Nine
Back in the Attic
Touched by a slant of light from the attic window, Peter was kneeling by one of the open trunks, weeping.
Jennifer was stunned. She couldn’t remember the last time she had seen him cry. Maybe when they’d been in third grade and he’d broken his arm playing soccer. Though even then he hadn’t cried in front of his teammates, but only when the doctor had begun to set the arm in plaster.
She waited before speaking, thinking he wouldn’t want to know she was watching him. But it was too late. He already knew she was there.
Twins always knew.
He turned and saw her but kept on crying, his face all scrunched up and his sobs coming out in great horrible gulps.
Jennifer went over and put her hand on his back.
His sobs slowed, then stopped. When he looked up, his eyes were cloudy with tears and his voice cracked as he spoke. “Sorry, Jen. It’s just ... I feel so helpless. And stupid. Why did I come racing to the attic, anyway? Molly’s not up here. How could she be?”
Jennifer looked around at the jumble of objects in the room. “No, she’s not here now, Peter. But you were right to come. She was here just minutes ago.”
Peter took a deep breath, and when he spoke again his voice was almost normal. “How can you know that?”
“Look around, Peter. What’s missing?” Jennifer said, gesturing broadly with her left hand.
Peter glanced briefly. “How should I know...” Then he stopped. “The baby doll in the christening dress. The one Molly wanted to bring downstairs. It’s not here.”
Jennifer nodded.
“But that’s impossible. It’s all impossible.”
“What it is,” Jennifer said carefully, “is magic.”
“But...”
And then she knew. Knew—and had to say. “You have to believe, Peter. You have to. Otherwise we’re never going to get Molly back.”
Peter stared at her in an odd way, Ms head to one side. He looked like some kind of bird. “How do you know that, Jen?”
“I just do.” She shrugged and wished she could tell him. But there was nothing to tell. All she had was a short, sudden shock of recognition: Here in Scotland magic is real. Briefly she wondered if she was as crazy as Gran. Then shook her head. They were not crazy, neither one of them. “I just do,” she repeated.
“But I don’t know that,” he said slowly, meaning that he was her twin and should feel the same things.
“You have to trust me on this, Peter,” Jennifer said.
He hesitated before speaking. “I do.” His mouth said the words but his eyes gave a more cautious answer.
“Please, Peter.”
After a long moment he shrugged. “All right, Jen. I don’t have much of a choice, do I?”
“No,” she said. “Nor do I.”
“So what’s next?”
“Let’s look at the map carefully,” Jennifer said. “I mean really carefully. If Michael Scot wants it so much, we need to find out why. Gran said that much of his power is invested in it.”
“What does that mean?” Peter asked. “Invested.”
“Like a magical bank account, I think.”
Still on his knees, Peter spread the map out on the table where Molly had been drawing just the day before. The map was clearly of Fairburn. Not only was the town’s name under Michael Scot’s, but they could identify the town features as well: High Street, where they had walked in the morning, Double Dykes Road, the casde, and the places of martyrs. There was a golden star on Abbot’s Close, right where Gran and Da’s cottage was situated.
“Look at these,” Peter said, pointing to four pictures, one in each corner of the map. Jennifer had been so focused on the map itself, she hadn’t paid them any attention.
In the upper right-hand corner was an Arab in a flowing burnoose, in the upper left a litde cat sitting in a box. The bottom left picture showed four young women dressed in wedding gowns and bridal veils, carrying roses. And in the lower right-hand comer was a hideous imp with long fangs like a saber-toothed tiger’s, and a strange hat on its head.
“This all reminds me of something. I can’t think what it is,” Jennifer said. She closed her eyes, trying to remember, then opened them again. “It’s hopeless, Peter. My mind’s a blank.”
“Mine isn’t. I know what it is—it’s the games, Jen
!” Peter picked up the Patience booklet. “Remember? The Sultan—well, that’s the Arab. And the third game is called Puss in the Corner.” He tapped the picture of the cat on the map. “And the fifth game is The Demon.” His hand hovered over but did not touch the imp. “Remember how I wanted to try that one because of the name, but it was too tough to start with.”
Jennifer took the Patience booklet from him and opened it to the first page. She scanned down the contents. “The game after Puss in the Corner is The Four Marriages. That must be the four women in the veils. You’re a genius, Peter!”
“But, Jen—it’s just riddles and a map and a game of cards,” said Peter miserably. “What does it really mean? And how will it help us get Molly back?”
They stared at one another, and suddenly Jennifer went cold. She almost said a bad word under her breath. Here they were talking about playing games, and somewhere else there was a frightened little girl, just four years old, who had been stolen away. That was not a game at all.
“Oh, Peter,” she said, her own voice cracking. “It’s all we have.”
This time it was his turn to do the comforting and hers to cry.
Ten
The Sultan
Jennifer wiped her dripping nose on her sleeve. “Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to go splah on you.” She didn’t mention that he’d been crying earlier, because it wouldn’t have helped to bring it up. He didn’t mention it, either.
“We should go downstairs and tell them Molly’s not here,” Peter said.
“They’ll have guessed by now.”
It was such a sensible answer, Peter just nodded. “But where is she?” Peter said. “I mean, Michael Scot touched her and then they just ... disappeared.”
“Magic.” Jennifer said the word with more confidence than she felt. “And the only way to get her back is with the same.”
“Don’t be a nitwit. We don’t have any magic.”
“We have the map,” Jennifer said. “And the cards. They are part of riddles. The Minor Arcana. I’m sure of it.”
He looked at her oddly.
“You promised to trust me.”
“Then we have to think this out carefully. Figure out what each item means.” Peter looked down at the map.
“Carefully and quickly,” Jennifer added unnecessarily.
Peter counted on his fingers. “The map. The cards. The turban. Maybe the doll. What else?” Jennifer nodded at each item. “Oh no!”
“Oh no, what?”
“I forgot. I have this key.” She pulled the key from her pocket and gave it to him.
He looked at the tag. “What’s a summer hoose?”
“I think it means summer house. You know—a garden house. Not to live in, but to read in or to play in.” Quickly Jennifer told him how she had gone into the back garden while he’d been trying out the croquet set, and how she’d gotten lost in the strange forest.
“...which was much bigger than it should have been.” She tried explaining what she hadn’t understood herself, making a complete mess of it.
Peter looked dubious.
But the moment she mentioned following the white cat, they both looked at the upper left-hand comer of the map. The puss in the box wasn’t white. It wasn’t any color at all.
“Still,” Jennifer said, “that’s one more corner that seems to have some connection with this ... thing.”
“I think,” Peter said, “that’s not quite right. I mean, I think this has more to do with the Patience games than the map.”
“Patience!” Jennifer said. “That’s it!”
“That’s what?”
“Mother said in the car on our way here that we needed patience.”
“She meant something else, Jen.”
“Maybe.”
He nodded. “OK—maybe.”
“And we have patience now. Or rather, we have the game.”
“Actually,” said Peter, “it’s not just one game, but a whole lot of them.”
“OK—a whole lot of Patiences. And they seem to relate somehow to the map. And Michael Scot wants the map and will trade us Molly for it. So.”
“So...”
“I think we need to play the games. Like Gran was doing downstairs.”
“Jen—Molly is missing. We have to do more than just play cards.” The crack in his voice had returned.
“Mom and Pop and Gran and Da are downstairs doing the ordinary things,” Jennifer said patiently. “Like calling the police and searching the house and the garden. We can’t help Molly that way. But we are twins—which Gran thinks is out of the ordinary. So what we’ve got to do is not the ordinary, but the extraordinary.”
“Like playing Patience?”
She nodded. “We did The Star first, right?”
“And it was easy.”
“Look.” She pointed to the star on the map. “I think that’s new. It’s brighter than the rest. I don’t think it was on the map until yesterday, after we played the game.”
“You can’t prove that, Jen.”
“You can’t not prove it,” Jennifer said.
“So what does it all mean?”
“I don’t know. I only know we have to play the games. And in the right order.”
“You can’t be serious.”
Jennifer looked at him without flinching. “Deadly serious.”
“You want to play The Sultan next?”
“Yes.”
“This is crazy, Jen.”
She handed him the cards. “Crazy or not, it’s the right thing to do. Somehow it’s the key.” She put her hand over her heart. “I know it here. You shuffle and deal. I’ll read out the rules.”
He took the packs of cards from her. “Please, Jen, let’s go downstairs.”
“‘Using a single pack ...'" she began.
“I know. I know. I started The Sultan before, remember?” He took out the four kings and the ace of hearts, and set them as shown in the diagram. Then, as if he’d suddenly turned into an expert, he shuffled the rest of the pack with a magician’s flair.
“You cut them,” he said, handing the cards to Jennifer.
She cut the cards and handed them back, and then Peter began the game.
While Peter played, Jennifer looked once more at the map. She was sure the Arab in the right-hand corner of the paper had been wearing only a big flowing robe before. But now—as she watched—he was slowly crowned with a turban as big as his head. The turban appeared as if sketched in by an invisible pen.
“Peter,” Jen said, turning to him, “look!”
“Shut up,” he said, “I’m almost done. There. See—the Sultan is surrounded by his wives.” He pointed to the King of Hearts, which was in the middle of the four queens. “What do you think?”
But Jennifer was no longer looking at the game. Or at the map. Instead she was staring at the play turban. It had fallen from the trunk and was lying on its side. In the middle of the turban shone a deep red stone.
Eleven
Patience
Peter,” Jennifer said, “that red jewel wasn’t here before.” She set down the booklet and went to pick up the map.
“Wasn’t where?”
“In the turban. It was only a plain turban before. And it wasn’t even on the map. See?”
“What are you talking about?” Peter asked. His voice seemed lined with resentment. He hardly even sounded like Peter.
“I don’t know,” Jennifer said, but softly, so as not to annoy him any more. “The map, the Patience games, the objects in the attic—they’re all linked somehow. Like tumblers in a lock. Each one opens it a bit more.”
“You’re not making sense, Jennifer,” Peter said gruffly.
“Just play the next game, Peter.”
He got ready to deal out Puss in the Corner, with the kind of ferocity he usually reserved for games like soccer, shuffling the cards with quick, angry movements.
Jennifer picked up the booklet again and found the right page. “‘This game is
a derivative from the original Patience,’” she read aloud, stumbling a bit over the words.
“Whatever,” muttered Peter. “Hurry up, Jennifer.”
“‘The first step,’” she read,“‘is to take out the four aces, and to place them face upward, so as to form a square. Having dutifully shuffled the rest of the cards...’” She continued reading till the end of the instructions, but then instead of watching Peter’s cards, she glanced over at the map.
As the game progressed, card upon card, the cat in the box on the map had taken on color. It went from no color at all to a perfect pearly white, as if the invisible hand now wielded a paintbrush.
“There!” said Peter after about ten minutes. “Done”
And done, too, was the white cat on the map, its whiskers a steely grey—like wires—its eyes a shade of amber, and its nails a shimmery sort of black.
“Peter...” Jennifer began, “the map...”
But he paid no attention to her. “The Four Marriages next,” he said. “Come on, Jennifer. Come on. Read to me how to set out the next tableau.”
This game took both packs of cards, and Jennifer began reading even before Peter had finished shuffling the packs together.
“‘Take the first thirteen cards that come to hand.’” She stopped. “Thirteen, Peter. I’m not sure that’s a good number to be playing with.”
“Don’t be daft,” he said to her, his voice as grey and steely as the cat’s whiskers. “Just read.”
Wondering what “daft” was, Jennifer read.
Peter played.
And on the map, the four brides’ faces were slowly drawn in with almost photographic realism.
Jennifer was startled when she realized that she actually recognized all four of the brides. One was Gran with her shiny white hair, one was Mom with that pair of deep dimples, one was Molly under glossy chestnut curls, and one was Jennifer herself, her red hair teasing from beneath a bridal veil. The white gowns suddenly shimmered like painted silk and, diagonally across the map, the white cat shimmered as well. Jennifer squinted her eyes and it seemed to her as if there were lines drawn across the map from the white of the cat to the white of the gowns.