Charlie Bone and the Shadow

by Jenny Nimmo

  "Boy, wait!" commanded Otus. "This is not as simple as it seems."

  "Nothing here is simple." Charlie began to run down the stone spiral.

  "STOP!" The giant's huge roar echoed down the stairwell, and Charlie was forced to obey. "It is most likely a trick, Charlie, to force you into the open. Come back, I beg you."

  Charlie reluctantly trudged back to the giant's room. The situation would be hopeless, he realized, if both he and Runner Bean were caught. "I feel so guilty," he told the giant, "leaving him out there, all alone, especially now that he's seen me."

  "I know, I know." Otus lit a candle and set it on the table. "But all around us there are towers and watchers. Soon the darkness will come, a darkness like no other, Charlie. No stars shine in Badlock and moonlight is - scarce. So we will creep down our tower and rescue the poor dog."

  The giant stirred the pot hanging over his stove. "I had a dog once, in the world we come from. It was a fine dog, and we were scarce parted. Here, in Badlock, there are no dogs or cats. There are only bugs and slimy, creeping, cold-blooded things called durgles. And the birds fly on bony, featherless wings, and they have long, fearful beaks."

  Charlie climbed onto the giant's bed. "Why are there no dogs or cats?"

  "The shadow and his people consider a creature's use solely the food it can provide, or the pelt that can become a cloak, a jerkin, or even shoes. Every warm-blooded creature has been hunted, almost to extinction. Only the squirras survive; they breed like demons, that is the reason, maybe."

  "What about blancavamps?" asked Charlie.

  "Aha, the blancavamps." Otus smiled. "They dare not touch the blancavamps, for they are ghosties." He ladled several dollops of steamy stew into two wooden bowls. "Come to the table, Charlie my descendant, and eat your supper."

  Charlie hauled himself off the bed and onto the tall chair, while the giant tore a round loaf in two and placed a piece beside each bowl. He then half-sat on the table and began to swish the bread into the stew, using it as a kind of spoon. Charlie did the same. Squirra stew was surprisingly good, but then Charlie was very hungry.

  They ate in silence for a while. Charlie kept thinking of Runner Bean outside the tower. How frightened he must be. And then the warm stew settled in his stomach, and he could only think how comforting it was. Occasionally, he glanced at his ancestor's face. He could see no resemblance between the Yewbeams he knew and the giant. Grandma Bone and her sisters had tiny black eyes and thin lips, while Otus had gray eyes and a wide, generous mouth. But, of course, many generations had come between them.

  "Tell me about your life," said the giant, scraping the last morsel from his bowl.

  Charlie licked his fingers until every delicious trace of the stew was gone, and then he began. He told the giant how his father had been hypnotized by Manfred Bloor and lived for ten long years in the school called Bloor's Academy, while no one knew he was there. He went on to say how he, Charlie, had discovered his talent for traveling into pictures. He described Grandma Bone and her terrible sisters, and his friends, the normal ones like Fidelio and Benjamin. "Only Fidelio isn't really normal," Charlie added. "He's a musical prodigy and one day he'll be famous."

  And then Charlie recounted some of his adventures with those other friends, the endowed, the descendants of the Red King, like himself. Emma, who could fly; Billy, who understood animals; Lysander, who could call up his spirit ancestors; Tancred, the storm-maker; Gabriel, the clairvoyant. "And there's Olivia." Charlie gave a chuckle. "She's an illusionist, but the Bloors don't know about her. She's kind of our secret weapon."

  "So this ancient man, Ezekiel Bloor, keeps you prisoner in his academy for the... ?" The giant looked at Charlie questioningly.

  "Gifted, I suppose you'd call it," said Charlie. "And we're not really prisoners."

  "But under his control."

  "Sometimes we disobey."

  "Good! Good!" cried Otus, clapping his hands. He glanced up at the window. "Darkness has come. The dog can be rescued."

  "Runner Bean!" Charlie had almost forgotten poor Runner Bean while he'd been talking to the giant.

  Otus led the way down the tower. He held the candle in an iron dish. It smelled like burning fat and cast huge, leaping shadows on the stone walls. When they reached the outer door, the giant stopped and listened. Charlie waited beside him, scarcely able to breathe.

  Otus had barely opened the door before Charlie rushed out. He was met by such an overpowering blackness, he felt he might have been blinded. And through the terrible dark came the winds, first from one side, then another, driving him against the wall of the tower, dragging his legs, howling in his head.

  "RUNNER!" Charlie screamed into the wind.

  He waited for an answering bark. But nothing could be heard above the winds.

  "Best return, boy," called Otus. "He has been taken."

  "No!" Charlie ran blindly forward. Suddenly, he was falling. He landed with a groan on the hard, rocky ground. Putting out a hand, he felt a damp wall. Something scurried over his fingers and he screamed again.

  There came a deep, throaty bark, and even in his dangerous position, Charlie felt a surge of joy. "Runner!" he called.

  The giant's voice drifted above the wind. "Cursed giant, that I am. I should have warned you of the pits. Where are you, boy?"

  "Here!" cried Charlie. He heard the thud of boots. A giant hand touched his, and then he was being hauled up the side of the pit. As he reached the top, a shaft of weak, ragged moonlight showed him a large yellow dog, perched on the rim. "Runner!" he shouted.

  Runner Bean barked delightedly as the giant bundled boy and dog toward the tower. "Hush, dog!" he said, pushing them both through the door.

  Charlie grabbed the excited dog's collar while Otus closed the door and drew two heavy bolts across it.

  "Faith, that dog will have us all in chains before night has passed," the giant muttered.

  "Did someone hear us?" Charlie stroked Runner Bean's head, calming him down.

  "I fear my neighbor," Otus admitted, as he went up the stone staircase. "His tower is close, and he is not a kind man."

  Now that Runner Bean had found Charlie, he seemed reluctant to climb the shadowy steps. Charlie had to coax him up with strokes and promises of bones, though he had no idea if any would be found once they reached the giant's room.

  The giant had thought ahead. By the time Charlie had enticed the nervous dog to the top of the stairs, Otus had fished two bones out of the cooking pot. Flinging them across the floor, he chuckled, "Chew on those, brave dog."

  "I don't think he feels very brave," Charlie remarked as he watched Runner Bean, ravenously gnawing the bones.

  "Charlie, you must flee from here," Otus said gravely. "We cannot hope to hide that dog. Soon my neighbor will alert Oddthumb and his crew. You will hear the horn, and then you must be gone."

  "But how?" Charlie gazed around the giant's room. "I can't," he said in a strangled voice. "I don't know how I got here. When I travel I have a wand ..."

  "A wand?" The giant's eyes widened. "Truly, you are a magician, then?"

  "No, no." Charlie shook his head. "It's just something that I inherited from my other ancestor, a Welsh wizard. It'd take too long to explain."

  Too long, indeed, for at that moment the eerie sound of a wailing horn echoed around the giant's tower.

  "Oh, mercy, what's to be done?" The giant strode around and around, clenching his fists and glaring at the high window. "I shall defend you with my last breath, Charlie. But I am only one. I cannot prevail. Oddthumb will take you. Oh, poor boy, what is to become of you?"

  The giant's mournful voice was too much for Runner Bean. He leaped up with a dreadful howl - and something astonishing happened. From inside one of the dog's ears, a white moth fluttered out. She came to rest on Charlie's arm.

  "Claerwen," breathed Charlie. "My wand."

  "In my day, we called such things moths," said the baffled giant.

  "Yes, yes. She is a moth, b
ut she was once a wand," Charlie told the giant. "Mr. Yewbeam, Otus - we can go now. Thank you, thank you..."

  "Then go," said Otus, "for I can hear troll feet. Swiftly, swiftly, Charlie Bone."

  "Maybe I could take you with me, Otus?"

  The giant sadly shook his head. "An impossibility. Go now, Charlie."

  Charlie flung his arm around Runner Bean. "I'll come back, Otus. I promise. I'll find a way to get you out of Badlock." Gazing at the moth, he cried, "Claerwen, take me home."

  The room around him began to jerk and jolt. Defying gravity, the table, chair, and bed tumbled sideways, then became airborne. Charlie was treading air. Now he was upside down. His ears were bombarded with a thousand sounds. He felt Runner's coarse hair melting under his fingers and tried to grip it tighter, but something or someone was trying to tear the dog from his grasp. And then his hand was empty and he was whirling away.

  Charlie caught one last glimpse of his ancestor's kind, incredulous face before he was thrust through time, through a sparkling, shifting web of sounds, smells, and sensations.

  He landed with a light bump on the cold cellar floor of number nine Filbert Street. The painting of Badlock stood against the wall behind him. Giving it one brief glance, Charlie ran to the steps and climbed up to the hall. He could hear voices arguing above him.

  "Mercy on us!" yelled Maisie, jumping out of her chair. "Charlie's back!"

  There was a sudden silence in the living room. Uncle Paton stepped out, followed by Fidelio, Benjamin, and Olivia.

  "Charlie!" cried Benjamin. "Have you got Runner?"

  Charlie still felt unsteady. Grasping the railing for support, he said, "Bit of a problem there, Ben."

  CHAPTER 4

  GREEN VAPOR

  “Charlie Bone, I hate you!"

  Benjamin's sudden explosion was so out of character, Charlie could only stare at his friend in astonishment.

  "You're always doing it," yelled Benjamin. "You're always losing my dog. That time he nearly drowned, and that other time when the enchanter came and..."

  "Benjamin Brown," roared Uncle Paton, "control yourself."

  Benjamin's mouth closed in a grim pout. His usually pale face had turned an angry red and his eyes were filled with tears.

  Charlie stared miserably at his feet. "I'm sorry, but I tried to bring Runner back with me, I really did."

  "You saw him?" Benjamin almost choked on his words. "How come you got out and he couldn't? He's trapped in that awful place... and... and ..."

  Uncle Paton put a hand on Benjamin's shoulder and gently propelled him toward the kitchen. "Come and sit down, all of you. We need to discuss things carefully."

  A voice called from the living room, "Oh, what a to-do!"

  "I suppose this is some devilish plan of yours, Grizelda," Uncle Paton retorted.

  "Mine?" came the plaintive cry. "I know nothing whatever about it. That painting was all wrapped up. How did I know Charlie would start prying?"

  "You knew all right," muttered Uncle Paton. Having gotten everyone into the kitchen, he slammed the door.

  "I'll make some sandwiches," said Maisie in her soothing, matter-of-fact voice.

  Everyone sat at the kitchen table while Maisie started slicing bread. Uncle Paton paced up and down, pinching his chin and scratching his head.

  "Charlie, aren't you going to tell us what happened?" Olivia demanded.

  Charlie looked at Benjamin, sitting hunched at the end of the table. "OK... if you all want to know."

  "Of course we do," said Fidelio. "That's why we're here."

  "It was weird," Charlie began, with another glance in Benjamin's direction. "I was just standing there, looking at the painting, when I felt myself being kind of dragged toward it. It was all wrapped up, but I heard a sound coming from it - the wind."

  "The wind?" Uncle Paton stopped pacing and came to sit at the table.

  "Go on," urged Olivia.

  "So I unwrapped the painting, just a bit, and then suddenly I was there. I hardly traveled at all. It was as if the painting reached out and sucked me in." Charlie looked around at the expectant faces; even Benjamin was staring at him.

  "Yes," Uncle Paton prompted, "and then?"

  "And then I met a giant."

  "A GIANT!" everyone exclaimed, including Maisie, who squeaked as well, having accidentally slammed her fingers in the fridge.

  "A sort of giant," Charlie amended. He went on to tell them about Oddthumb and the troll army, about the squirras and blancavamps, the black fortress on the mountain, and finally, how Runner Bean had arrived, with Charlie's moth hidden in his ear.

  Not once during Charlie's long account did anyone say a word, and when he came to the end, such a deep silence had fallen in the room that no one seemed inclined to break it until Benjamin said, very softly, "What will happen to Runner if the trolls want his fur?"

  Before anyone dared to make a guess, Maisie put a huge plate of sandwiches on the table, saying, "Have some food, kids."

  "I hope that applies to me, too," said Uncle Paton, reaching for a sandwich with apple and walnut clearly visible along one side. "Charlie," he continued, "you told us that you saw a black fortress in Badlock."

  "In the distance," Charlie spoke through a mouthful of cheese and pickle. "The enchanter's fortress. Just looking at it gave me the creeps."

  "Hmm." Uncle Paton smoothed back a long lock of black hair that he had almost eaten with the sandwich. "It occurs to me that Harken the Enchanter is at work again."

  "He can't be," Fidelio argued. "Charlie and the others got rid of him when they chanted that spell around the king's tree."

  "He MUST have gone," cried Olivia, jumping up and down in her seat, "because Charlie's mother was saved and... and his father woke up and... and Joshua's mother, the witch, has vanished."

  "And he doesn't live in Kingdom's Department Store anymore," Benjamin assured them, "because Mom and Dad met the new owner when they were on a shoplifting case there, and they said he was quite normal, except for being overweight, in Mom's opinion, anyway."

  "Nevertheless." Uncle Paton turned to Charlie. "Is there still a shadow in the king's portrait?"

  Charlie confessed that there was. The portrait hung in the King's room at Bloor's Academy, and Charlie had often tried to enter it, but a dark shadow behind the king always prevented Charlie from meeting his famous ancestor.

  "I rest my case," said Uncle Paton.

  Olivia raised an eyebrow. "What does that mean, Mr. Yewbeam?"

  Uncle Paton sighed. "It means, my dear Olivia, that if there is a shadow in the king's portrait, a shadow remains in our lives; it's very faint," he added, observing the children's anxious faces, "but it's a shadow, nevertheless. It seems to me that someone is still communicating with Harken the Enchanter, hence the arrival of that painting and the unusual manner of Charlie's journey into Badlock."

  Uncle Paton found the five pairs of eyes trained expectantly upon him rather disconcerting. Realizing that he would have to come up with something better, he said, "But who, or what, or why ... I can't yet fathom. Unless ..." He scratched his chin. "Unless someone is using the mirror."

  "The Mirror of Amoret was cracked," Charlie said slowly, "when Joshua stole it from me."

  "Perhaps it's been fixed," Benjamin suggested as he tried to wish away the awful vision of his starved dog, chained to a block of stone, while Oddthumb, the troll, approached with a large pair of shears.

  The Mirror of Amoret had not been fixed. Mrs. Tilpin, formerly Miss Chrystal, might have been a witch, but she had her limitations. She had tried every spell she could find in The Collected Charms and Enchantments of Steffania Sugwash (a book she had inherited from her uncle, the notorious Silas Sugwash), all to no avail. So she had decided to enroll some of the endowed students of Bloor's Academy in a small weekend class, where she hoped their special powers could be combined to fix the precious, but sadly damaged, Mirror of Amoret.

  With Manfred Bloor's assistance, Mrs. Tilpin had managed
to hide herself away in the basement of Bloor's Academy. Here she lived with her son, Joshua, who resented every moment spent in the two damp and dingy rooms, while his mother chanted and hummed and burned herbs in iron bowls and sometimes made him dance horrible dances with her. But she was his mother, and he didn't blame her. He blamed Charlie Bone, who had caused his mother to reveal herself. Charlie, who had stolen the Mirror of Amoret and made Joshua break it.

  Not many children would choose to spend their Saturday afternoons in a dank basement room at Bloor's Academy, but Dorcas Loom and the Branko twins, Idith and Inez, were great admirers of Fairy Tilpin (as they liked to call her). This description might once have applied, but not since Mrs. Tilpin had been communicating with Harken the Enchanter. Joshua was, of course, in attendance, but the last member of the group, Dagbert Endless, was less enthusiastic. While the others leaned over Mrs. Tilpin's table, listening with rapt attention, Dagbert preferred to pace in the shadows. Occasionally, he would glance at the little group with a slightly superior expression on his face. This annoyed Mrs. Tilpin, but she never once criticized Dagbert, for she knew that he was the most powerful of all the children, and if she were to bring Harken the Enchanter back into the world, then Dagbert would be an invaluable ally.

  Today, Mrs. Tilpin was feeling especially optimistic. The children were ready to proceed. She put The Collected Charms and Enchantments of Steffania Sugwash into a cabinet and locked the door with the small silver key that she kept in her pocket.

  "Aww! Aren't you going to tell us about Steffania today?" One of the Branko twins sent a spindly chair teetering across the room.

  "Petulance will get you nowhere," admonished Mrs. Tilpin. "Who did it?"

  "I did," said the twin who was responsible.

  "Yes, but which twin are you?"

  "Can't you tell, Mrs. "I.?" The voice came from the shadows beside a looming cabinet. "And I thought you knew everything."

  Mrs. Tilpin decided to ignore Dagbert. "If you don't tell me which twin you are, then the lesson is over."

  The Branko twins, sitting close to each other, stared at Mrs. Tilpin from under their deep black bangs. Their round, porcelain-white faces showed not a trace of emotion, but then one of them suddenly cried, "Inez, Fairy Tilpin. I'm Inez."