by B G Denvil
Edna promptly joined us, slender hands on slender hips. “I have a feeling it is someone with a very perverse sense of humour,” she said. “Now we even have Godwin tumbling back into the fold. Are we content to be tumbled around by someone who may think he’s having fun? Or even someone who hates us?”
“We’ll fight it,” chorused everyone within the great hall where we were sitting by the fire, hoping for a cosy evening. But no such luck.
“Where’s Angdar’s axe?” called Butterfield. “He didn’t have it when he disappeared. But that’s what he came back for.”
“Go and search,” I suggested, and she ran from the hall.
“We need lots of ideas,” I said. “Who’s doing this? And why? Or is it really the dark shadow magic, if so, we’ll need to plan something far more serious.”
“We’re strong enough to overcome any problem, serious or otherwise,” called Edna from the chair by the inglenook.
I agreed. But, really, I just wanted to flop again.
Nine
“Number one,” I told everyone—even the kitchen and garden staff had joined us, “the shadow power. We went to find the red spoon and toadstool. We’ve had some extremely strange experiences, though, naturally, no spoon or toadstool. But is this relevant to our other problems? Or not?’
Whistle was sitting on my shoulder, and Wolf at my feet. I was standing with my back to the fire, and I must say my sit-upon was scorching. Someone had lit a real fire, instead of a cosy make-believe one.
“Number two,” I continued, “we think the plague is rife in the area, and we’ve blocked off Little Piddleton in order to keep out the disease, but this has caused a few problems too. We need to find out what the plague is doing out there. Number three, the rats, although that’s really part of number two.”
“Number two and a half,” said Harry.
I accepted this. “Very well. Now number three, Godwin keeps being seen, and accusing everyone of his murder, even though we still don’t know who killed him. And number four, Angdar has now completely disappeared.”
Butterfield raised the magic axe, saying, “He didn’t take this, which was the whole reason he turned up in the first place, so it wasn’t his choice to go.”
Actually, I was still counting in my head, feeling there had to be more problems, but not being able to think of any more. “We all get together,” I said, “and sort these things out, one by one.”
Whistle interrupted. “We start with the last and work backwards,” he said. “The dark power is the last thing to deal with. It might be the most threatening and dangerous, but it could take years to understand, let alone conquer. And Edna, Rosie and I will have to return to Stonehenge.”
“What about me?” Peg demanded, affronted.
“You said you didn’t ever want to go there again,” Edna reminded her.
“What’s that got to do with it?” sniffed Peg. “I’m always saying things. It doesn’t mean I want to be left out.”
“First, it’s Angdar,” I said in a hurry.
“Brilliant.” Butterfield cheered up slightly. She was still determinedly clutching Angdar’s axe.
“And perhaps, in the meantime, Sym could run back to his own village and find out if everything is all better, or if the plague is still a threat.”
“I will,” he said, feeling important. “As long as you let me back in afterwards.”
“And perhaps Bertie can carry on checking the rats.”
“What joy.” He didn’t brighten up at all.
“And Maggs,” I finished up, “can try and remember all the different stories and muddles that happened when Godwin died, and make a list.”
“Oh, that’ll be fun,” she said, adding a sniff.
Butterfield hurried over, and the squirrel hurried off. Whistle was really only interested in the Shadow Force, and I guessed he’d be calling for company to Stonehenge fairly soon. It was not, after all, his fault that very small red squirrels could achieve so little on their own.
We started with Angdar. The usual beginning, of course, with all of us, first one by one and then all together, calling him with as much magical concentration as we felt, which was considerable. But our Viking friend did not reappear.
None of us had actually expected miraculous results from the first attempt, but since Angdar had originally manifested from his own grave, searching for the axe, we felt that some sort of repeat might be attempted. The grave site, however, was now deep beneath the new cottage we had produced some time previously.
“How do we discover his exact position right now?” Butterfield objected. “He could be back in his own time. He could just be dead without the power to become a ghost any longer. Or he could be back in his grave.”
“That’s the first business to solve,” said Edna.
I felt a bit sick. “Are you saying I should pull down that entire cottage? I mean, Angdar is more important than a few rooms – but there’s place for a lot of needy witches and wizards over there, and I already have Gorgeous and Bertie and Sym with his family, not to mention the donkey.”
“The biggest difficulty,” said Butterfield, “is that the other two possibilities are absolutely closed to us. We can’t go back in time. Many have tried that with no success. We can’t do it. As for flitting off to some sort of the afterlife life – that must be impossible unless we want to kill ourselves, And I don’t, even if it means losing Angdar.”
“We managed the High Cloud Court,” Peg pointed out.
“But Angdar wasn’t a wizard. He can’t be there,” I said.
“But Whistle could check,” said Edna with sudden excitement. “I don’t suppose he’ll want to, unless he’s sure he can get out again. But he’s the obvious one to look.”
Butterfield, Edna and I all shook our heads at the same time. “But he is a wizard, so he won’t be with the mortals.”
“I’d love to go back in time.” I’d often dreamed of it and had even tried once or twice. “Just imagine speaking to the Romans, or hitting King John with a poker, or – well – Stonehenge.”
I knew Edna would grab the point immediately. “Exactly, and we did,” she said. “We weren’t there. But we saw. We couldn’t control what we saw – but we saw what was relevant.”
“But it just happened,” I sighed. “We didn’t control a thing.”
“We could perhaps search the grave,” I pondered, unsure. “If all of us, and I think it might take the whole of The Rookery, lifted that new cottage up into the air, Butterfield rushes underneath and looks inside the foundations, and runs out with the answer, and then we all put the cottage back down.”
Clearly everyone thought this a little exaggerated, but finally Edna agreed. “I suppose we should. It would need a considerable amount of magical strength.”
“Accepting any sort of human afterlife is out of the question,” I said, “we are left with two. Lift the house and look in the grave. Or go back in time. I know which one I’d prefer, but since I’m quite sure I can’t do it, it should be checking the grave site first.”
A horrible thought. I wasn’t feeling particularly generous towards Angdar at the moment. Why had he just completely disappeared in the middle of everything else? And of course, one of the possibilities which no one had included on our list, was the possibility of a dark power interference. I just shook my head. Why would Angdar, of all people, be picked as a victim? He wasn’t even living.
We trotted around and made calls, one way or another, and gathered together the vast majority of our tenants. The staff were all low grades, except for our glorious cook Issa, but they were all sweet enough to come and help anyway. Twenty of us surrounded the newly built four-storey cottage. The grades must have added to an impressive final number. Peg, Edna, Butterfield and Mandrake, then Harry with Fanny, Dandy hurrying along leading Inky, Nan, Julia, Uta, Emmeline and Pixie. Unfortunately, Bertie was still rat rescuing, but Lemony, Issa and Toby turned up and joined in as we started. Issa called along her two maids to
help, our two lovely gardeners insisted on joining us, and although Sym had gone, his father stood next to Mandrake.
We held hands and raised them. Chanting and heaving upwards, it took a very long time to work, but in the end, it was gloriously successful.
The entire house swayed, and with quite a deal of loose earth falling from floors and sides, it was raised even higher than our fingers.
With a squeak and a rush, Butterfield dived down to the spot where the grave had been. Our foundations were covering the space, but Butterfield was able, with a whizz of magic, to thrust her hand straight through the ground, and see if that grave was full or empty, and if full, what it contained.
Within five blinks, she was back out and shouting for us to get the house back in place. Which we did. It needed some fussing over afterwards, and Peg and I nipped around several times, pushing bits down and pulling bits up, making sure doors opened and corridors weren’t wonky.
Yet sadly it had all been a waste of time anyway, for the grave had not been empty, but only full of earth. Neither bones for full fleshed bodies were there, so clearly Angdar was somewhere else.
“What a happy colony of rats you have, Rosie,” Bertie told me when he returned, “and several more litters, in fact. Every rat alive, well fed and chirruping.”
I told him what we had attempted so far, and explained what we planned to try next. “I intend going back in time.”
This had to be faced alone, and I went to my own bedchamber, put up the shutters, lay down and started to exercise every tiny scraping of magic I could find within me. Most of it was concentration and trust, of course, as all of it was in one way or another. There certainly weren’t any ready-made spells for such an operation. But I wasn’t concentrating purely on time travel – I was attempting to discover exactly where Angdar was.
It was only much later, when I realised I had lain on that bed attempting to amass my magical skills for over ten hours. No sleep. Just the furious concentration, sinking down into the mattress and splitting myself into separate parts. Without moving my arms – indeed they were over my body, wrists crossed – I imagined them upraised. This was not difficult, but it took a little time to be confident my arms were stretched high, and would not collapse. Then I raised my entire body beneath my arms, floating upwards.
Once I was out of my solid body and into my spirit without weight, I moved myself into darkness. I saw time shift. I rolled it endlessly, rolling backwards, seeing it shift like sand, and flow like water.
I forced time into retreat.
Not daring to open my eyes, I continued to recreate myself into a floating, or drifting mist, shaped with arms, hands, legs, head and body, but without any of these being truly myself. I was weightless consciousness. And I travelled backwards. I could feel it.
Time moved so slowly, and I made no attempt to speed, accepting I would only be shifting my imagination if I tried to rush. I refused to hesitate, but I slowed myself so profoundly I did not believe it could have escaped me.
I could not waste time, for time travelled with me. And I floated back, and back, and back, through the months of heat and freeze, through wind and storm, and in this fashion, through years.
It was when I felt the bounce of time stopping, that I opened my eyes.
And there it was. Well, I was a ninety-eight grade.
There was a cliff, high as mountains and jagged like the crags of hell. The wind was a gale and whined through the grass, buffeting against the rock. I crouched on the edge, unafraid. I couldn’t fall because I wasn’t there. I just peered down. I saw twenty men or more standing and watching the shoreline, where a huge ship—clinker built with one enormous mast, the sail folded on the deck below—was moored. There seemed to be no steps from deck to cabins, to the cargo hold, or to the bilges of the craft. One deck only, oars piled along the side of the hull, awaited the twenty men ready to climb aboard. But not one man was remotely like Angdar. I watched until the boat set sail. The men hauled on the ropes, the sail rose and filled at once with that ravenous wind. It beat the waves up against the keel, the men had untied its moorings, and the ship—the sail now battering back on the mast as it changed direction—ploughed the water towards the great flat horizon.
Then I heard a soft word behind me.
“Rosie? It can’t be. I’m not real. How can you be real?”
I grabbed his hand and stared at him. “Neither of us are really here,” I said. “No one living would see us. None of your Norsemen here would even see us as ghosts. But I see you, and you see me, and Butterfield has your magical axe safe, and she misses you constantly.”
He stared back at me as if he had thought himself lost for ever, and now the first tiny glimpse of hope had resurfaced. “I love her.” He’d never said that before. Butterfield had wanted to hear him say it, but told me he never had.
Now he said, “I’m ready. Whatever it takes, bring me back to her and the greatest friends I’ve ever had.”
The long ship was edging into the open seas, the men were at the oars as they waited for the wind to drive them from the fjord and into the direction they needed, for still the sail took the wind’s blast outwards, but then slashed back against mast and oars. They strained forwards. Even from so far above. I could see their muscles contort. And Angdar pointed. “I know the captain. He was my brother. Never my friend. I ask Odin to take me back to where I now feel more alive than I did when I lived.”
“It’s me,” I grinned. “I’ll be taking you back. But if Odin cares to help, then I’d be gratified.”
The renewed hope in his face was so clear and so exuberant, I was nearly laughing. But instead I took his hand, feeling the ridges across his palm. His hand was that of a man who had known work all his life, the marks and calluses came from years of rowing, or sword, axe, and even perhaps ship building. Well, now all that was over.
“We have to sit,” I told him. “You can’t help with the magic, but you can help with the concentration. But perhaps, don’t think at all. Whatever else, you mustn’t doubt, and you mustn’t change your mind about where you want to go. No lingering worries about coming back to us.”
“I’m certain alright,” he said. “No worries. No doubts. I want your pretty home and the peace I’ve discovered there. But most of all I want to see Butterfield smile again, and take her into my arms. And kiss her, if she’ll let me.”
It had taken more than ten hours to travel back. I had spent about an hour watching that ship sail west. Travelling back to The Rookery, bringing Angdar with me, took seventeen hours and a little more. Nearly a day and a night. We arrived at sunrise, with the residents just waking.
Ten
I was so proud of what I’d achieved.
Not travelling back in time, perhaps. But seeing back in time. Had Angdar been a living, jumping, breathing Norseman then he’d not have seen me, and I never could have brought him back with me. Yet I had seen the real life of those times, the faces and actions of the living, and could have heard their speech if I’d been closer. I’d seen the beauty and the problems. And I thought, although I could not be sure, that I could do it again.
But it was Butterfield flinging herself into his arms that was now the greatest joy. I forgot my own pride and just adored seeing the love of those around me.
Then a mass of people swarmed around us, with Butterfield rushing first, to thank me, to congratulate me, and to ask me what I had done, and how I had done it.
That was a sweet feeling, and the pride slipped back. But I told them, “My greatest interest,” which was true, “is now in finding out how I did it, and how we can all learn to do it.”
“How did you get there?”
“And why was he there in the first place?”
“There’s a hundred questions,” Angdar said. His grin shone with delight, but he seemed glued to Butterfield, his arm around her shoulder unmoving, and nor did she try to pull away.
“This leaves a bunch of puzzles, heavy as a long ship itself,” insis
ted Butterfield. “Who stole my Angdar away? Why send him back to where he was born, instead of where he died? How did Rosie find her way back at all, and especially to the place where he was?”
“Does it matter?” someone muttered. I could have wagered it was Montague, but I couldn’t see him.
Butterfield faced me, and Angdar stood tight behind her, both arms around her waist and his head over her shoulder. “I’ve known miracles before,” he said softly, “and being here with Butterfield is already a miracle. But I always thanked Odin and Thor, Freya and the gods of Valhalla. Now,” and he leaned down and kissed the soft cheek near his mouth, “I know this is the magic skill of The Rookery, and the mighty lass in charge.”
I laughed, but my mind was somewhere else, and I couldn’t get the image of one tiny Troilus bug out of my head.
Angdar took back possession of his axe, and settled into almost domestic comfort. It was rare to see either Angdar without Butterfield, or, naturally, she without him. But we were still in the middle of other difficulties, and in spite of my thoughts of my adopted mother, I didn’t speak of that to Peg or Edna. There was still Godwin to worry over, and the whole business of the plague and the village and my imprisoned rats.
I asked Peg and Edna to come to the village with me, and they agreed without hesitation. “We need to check on the rats.” I added. They were slightly less eager, but nodded anyway.
Angdar was keen too. “We’ll come,” he said. “If I can find a cape.”
Now mid-November, the weather was a grey cape itself, with bubbles of frost budding along every roadside. I thought, well – if I was clever enough to sort-of travel time, then surely I could keep myself lovely and hot from inside out. But it didn’t work.
I started thinking of Alice instead, and that most certainly didn’t keep me warm.