For a moment it looked as though Will was going to rush up to the cell door, rattle at the bars, and start screaming at the princess to tell him why she had killed Holmes. But he regained his composure and approached the little girl with unexpected calmness. Their eyes seemed to bore into each other. “Give me the key, Amy,” he said quietly, the words trembling in his throat.
The metal of the key had warmed up in my hands. I ran my fingertips over the rusty key bit and thought about my grandmother and the bloodstained heather where she had lain. I thought about the chaos in the book world and the stories that had been so cruelly mutilated. And I thought about the fact that this child had tried to kill me. Then I put the key in my trouser pocket and let out a sigh. “No.”
Will looked at me.
“As long as she’s in there she can’t do any more harm,” I explained. “And it’ll give us time to think.”
“About what?”
“About what we’re going to do with her,” I said flatly.
Will wove his fingers through mine, almost crushing them. “Okay. Agreed,” he said at last with a sigh.
“Agreed,” I echoed, just for something to say. The silent princess in her cell was so ghostly, so unreal. But she was there.
For a while we just stood there and stared at the child, who had put her head to one side and was gazing intently back at us. I’d expected hatred to flare up in me when we found her, rage, a thirst for revenge. But all I felt was uneasy. Uneasy and a little helpless. Here she was, then—the girl Will, Werther, and I had been searching for for weeks. Brock had practically handed her to us on a silver platter. But what now?
Again I sensed, somewhere at the edges of my consciousness, that I was missing something.
“Where are the stolen ideas?” I asked the princess. “Where have you hidden them?”
But she didn’t answer, of course. She simply lowered her eyes and turned away from us. Her back was so bony, and her elbows jutted out so sharply from her curtain of matted hair. She must be half starved. A touch of pity wormed its way into my thoughts. The key lay heavy against my thigh. Pity?
I pulled Will hurriedly away from the cell door. The flashlight had broken when he’d dropped it, so he took one of the flaming torches from its bracket and we walked back down the tunnel away from the little girl. We could still hear her, however, as we turned the corner.
“She knew,” she said in her high, clear child’s voice, as if trying to console herself, “that he would stop the monster.”
We hastened our steps, running along the stone passageways, up the stairs, through the corridors of the castle. Soon we were stepping back out into the rain.
The storm was fiercer now, whipping up the surface of the sea and sending tongues of lightning flickering across the sky where mountains of dark black clouds were massing. But I welcomed the icy raindrops on my skin—they seemed to wash away my confusion. The wind swept away all my emotions and the thunder silenced the whispering voices in the back of my head. They were replaced by cold, clear thoughts. Thoughts like frozen glass. Ice-cold and sharp. And at last, as I tramped across the moor at Will’s side, I realized what it was that had been troubling me since the previous day. At last I saw what it was about all this that didn’t fit together.
The thief Werther and I had seen in the book world was not a child.
He was bigger.
As big as a grown man.
The knight had realized too late.
Far too late.
How could he not have noticed the transformation?
What had he done?
17
THE MONSTER
WE MISSED WERTHER’S ALARM.
Will and I had spent the night in his cottage, where we’d taken turns to stay awake and keep watch in case Werther found out any new information and needed to get hold of us. One of us had slept on the sofa while the other kept an eye on the first page of Peter Pan. But at some point this system seemed to have broken down, because when I opened my eyes at daybreak Will was nowhere to be seen.
His copy of Peter Pan lay abandoned on the rug by the stove. The book was still open, and I could see at a glance that the action had been interrupted several times by a young man in silk stockings shouting my name.
“Miss Amy! He is back!” he’d yelled, right after the first line about all children having to grow up. “The Odyssey! It is The Odyssey! Come quickly!”
At this point Werther withdrew into the background of the story but before long (just after the bit about the kiss hidden in the corner of Wendy’s mother’s mouth) he popped up again: “Miss Amy! Where are you? Should I go alone?” A few lines later, Werther began running frantically to and fro. “Miss Amy?”
I turned the page. Werther must indeed have gone to The Odyssey without me, because on the second page the story continued as normal. But on the third page Werther could be seen flitting about again. He came charging back into the story through the middle of two paragraphs. This time his clothes were wet and he looked bruised and battered.
“Miss Amy!” he shouted. “It is too late! The thief has stolen one of the two sea monsters, and the other—ah, there it is again! Help!”
And again he vanished from the book.
I went rushing out of the cottage onto the moor before I’d even finished reading. Where on earth was Will? Why hadn’t he woken me up? Had he jumped into The Odyssey without me?
As I ran I scoured Peter Pan for further clues. And there—on page five Werther reappeared with a long-drawn-out “Heeeeeeeelp!” followed by the sound of mighty lizard legs stomping along behind him, coming closer and closer. Then he disappeared from the book completely. Had Will already rescued him and sent the monster back to The Odyssey?
I sprinted up to the stone circle, certain that when I arrived I would find an open copy of the ancient epic poem under one of the gateways. But I was wrong. There was not a single book up here—no Odyssey, no nothing. Which meant that Will wasn’t in the book world either: Werther had been left to fight the sea monster all on his own, and I’d wasted precious time running up here. Why hadn’t I gone to Werther’s aid right away, straight from the cottage?
Damn, damn, damn!
I threw myself to the ground and slid Peter Pan over my face. A moment later the letters swam before my eyes and sucked me into the story.
* * *
Will was leaning against the old hearth at Macalister Castle. His eyes were on the door that led down to the dungeons. It was open a crack. Had he and Amy not closed it properly the night before? He moved closer, trying to remember. But wisps of fog clouded his brain.
He walked down the stairs.
The fog was stopping him from thinking clearly. It was making him forget why he’d come here. He couldn’t even remember how he’d got here, if he was being honest.…
He must have fallen asleep because he’d had a dream, about Holmes—still dead—and about the princess, who had called out to him. Once again, anger at what the girl had done to his best friend sank its claws into him and burrowed into his guts. Had his subconscious driven him to the castle to interrogate the princess again? To force her to look him in the eye and explain herself? To get his revenge?
Will reached the bottom of the staircase. Darkness surrounded him. Without his torch he was forced to feel his way along the clammy walls with his fingers. But he didn’t care. The musty breath of the dungeons filled his lungs. Anger sliced through his stomach and ate into his chest, its claws tearing at his ribs.
Why had the princess killed Holmes? Why? What had he known that she didn’t want him to know?
Will stumbled through the darkness, ducking beneath the low ceilings. His fingers touched rock and metal bars. Once, something hairy with too many legs went scuttling across his hand. At last he turned the final corner of the tunnel. There was only one torch left burning on the wall—its light hurt his eyes. He wrenched it out of its bracket and spun around, directing the light toward the cell behind him.
Rage was roaring in his ears now, but he resisted the powerful urge to fling the flaming torch through the bars into the princess’s gaunt face. Instead he moved closer and shone the firelight into the cell. The pallet was still in place, and in the corners of the cell were the same pools of shadow as on the evening before.
But the princess was gone.
She was gone?
Yes, gone. And the barred door stood open.
Will kicked out at the stone wall. How could this happen? Had somebody set the girl free? Amy? Or had she managed to escape on her own?
The lock looked undamaged, as if it had been opened with a key.
Damn it! Will rubbed his eyes with thumb and forefinger. At least his rage had swallowed up the fog in his head. If the princess had escaped, there was presumably nothing to stop her committing another theft. She might already have gone back into the book world. Werther might already have sounded the alarm!
Come to think of it—why had Will left Peter Pan behind? Hadn’t it been his turn to keep watch?
His feet flew through the tunnel and up the stairs. He sprinted across the old kitchen, along the draughty corridors and out of the castle gates. A few minutes later he was back at his cottage.
“Amy!” he cried, hurrying inside. “You have to wake up—I—”
But Amy was gone, and so was Peter Pan. Will bit his lip and tasted blood. His eyes darted feverishly around the room for an instant, as if expecting to see Amy or the princess behind the stove or by the door. But that was ridiculous, of course. Will turned on his heel and kept running.
Werther must have appeared in the book and called to them. Amy was probably in the book world right now. Without him. What if she needed his help? Why had he gone down to those bloody dungeons? How could he have abandoned her like that? Will headed for the portal as fast as he could. He needed to jump, right away. There was still a chance he might be able to help Amy and Werther stop the princess.
He climbed the hill in long strides and burst into the stone circle. It was just as he’d suspected. Peter Pan lay open under one of the gateways—Amy must have jumped in not long ago. But there was somebody else standing at the center of the Porta Litterae.
The princess laughed when she saw Will. It was not the laugh of a child, but that of a queen. On her head was the bloodred diadem. “You will come with me,” she said, and extended her hand as if expecting him to kneel and kiss it.
* * *
The monster that was chasing Werther was the most hideous creature I had ever seen. It looked like a sausage with scales. Unfortunately this particular sausage was the size of a high-speed train and the front end consisted primarily of teeth, set in jagged rows one behind the other inside its enormous mouth. It didn’t have any eyes, though—at least not that I could see. And its lizardy legs were tiny, barely capable of supporting its own weight. The creature was clearly more at home in the water than on land.
Even on solid ground, however, it was far from slow. When I landed in Peter Pan it was in the process of chasing Werther right across Neverland and into a neighboring story.
“Miss Amy,” panted Werther as I joined him. “I am exceedingly glad to see you.”
“Likewise,” I grunted, through gritted teeth. The smell of the beast’s breath was making me feel sick. “We have to take it back to its story.”
“That thought had occurred to me, too. But I was somewhat preoccupied with staying alive,” replied Werther. The monster took a huge bound toward us and snapped at Werther’s head, coming so close that its jaws closed around the velvet ribbon in his ponytail.
We ducked aside, rolled down a slope, and ran on side by side, splitting up and veering off to the right and left from time to time to confuse the monster. Together we reached The Odyssey and the ocean strait where the beast lived. But it showed not the slightest interest in its own story. For some reason it didn’t want to go home. It was intent on eating Werther.
“I have an idea!” cried Werther at last. We flicked ourselves through the pages of The Odyssey from one island to the next, with the monster still hot on our heels. Soon we’d lured it out of the epic poem and into the story of War and Peace, to a scene between the enemy lines at the Battle of Austerlitz. Frustratingly, however, not even cannonballs seemed able to make any sort of impression on it.
By this time we were completely out of breath. We’d narrowly avoided being swallowed by the monster several times and the more exhausted we got, the more frequent these near misses became. Werther was panting so loudly that I was afraid he might faint at any moment. On a sudden impulse, therefore, as we passed a series of fairy tales, I dragged a stumbling Werther behind me into Rapunzel. We scrambled up the captive girl’s braid and into her sky-high tower. And there we sat, watching the monster as it circled the walls and launched itself at them with dogged persistence. Werther, still out of breath and scarlet in the face, told me in broken sentences what had happened before my arrival.
The thief, it seemed, had been less purposeful this time than on his previous forays. He’d been seen roaming around The Odyssey for some time, as if unsure whether or not to steal the tenth idea. But in the end he’d made his move and taken one of the two sea monsters (the one he’d stolen, claimed Werther, was even uglier and more terrible than the scaly sausage at the foot of the tower). Werther had tried to stop the thief and pull down his hood, but by that time the second monster had spotted him and he’d had to run for his life.
“I had no choice but to flee, Miss Amy,” he explained remorsefully.
“I’m sorry I came too late to help you.”
Werther brushed my apology aside. “I am the one who has failed. I had the chance to catch the thief, but I saved my own life instead. Because I am a coward.” He sniffed.
“Rubbish,” I said. “You’re one of the best and bravest friends I’ve ever had.”
Werther’s face glowed an even brighter red. “Miss Amy,” he whispered. His hand reached for mine.
I beat a hasty retreat and went to lean out of the window where I stood watching the monster. It was making enthusiastic attempts to clamber up the side of the tower, scrabbling at the wall with its little lizard legs.
“Might there be some kind of trick for calming it down?” I wondered. “Do you know much about The Odyssey? How do the characters fight the beast?”
“Hmm,” said Werther. “I believe Odysseus endeavors to stay as far away from her as possible.”
“Her?” I asked. “It’s a girl?”
Werther nodded. “Her name is Charybdis, and she causes deadly whirlpools.”
The scaly sausage’s name was as ugly as she was, then. “She’s pretty deadly with or without a whirlpool, if you ask me,” I said, pointing to the huge maw full of teeth still snapping in our direction.
“Indeed.” Werther sighed and patted the back of his head. Only now did I see that the monster had bitten off not only his velvet ribbon but most of his ponytail as well. “But she will not be able to climb up here. You should jump back to the outside world, Miss Amy, and try to stop the thief from there. Perhaps the last idea has not yet been delivered to the princess’s dungeon.”
I knew he was right. I’d felt uneasy for a while now, because I was afraid something terrible was going to happen on Stormsay once the princess had got hold of all ten ideas. “But what about you?” I asked. I felt as though I was leaving Werther in the lurch again.
“Well now, I … I shall keep this charming young lady company,” he said, smiling over at Rapunzel. She waved shyly back at him.
“Okay, great,” I said. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.” I tugged at a loose stone in the wall of the tower. “Take care of yourself, okay?” I called just before the page collapsed on top of me. I took the shortest possible route back to Peter Pan, and from there I jumped back to Stormsay.
* * *
I knew something was wrong the moment I landed.
“… with me,” I heard a high voice say. Then I caught sight of the princess i
n the middle of the stone circle. To my left stood Will, his eyes pinned on the little girl. He looked confused, as though he were struggling to think clearly.
I scrambled to my feet and took his hand. “Where were you?” I whispered. “And why is she out of her cell?”
But before Will could reply, the princess laughed aloud. “Wonderful!” she cried. “This is wonderful. Now you can both come with me.” She fished a few scraps of burned paper from the depths of her gown and scattered them underneath one of the archways. Then she placed two shimmering spheres in their midst. The Little Prince’s flower was suspended inside one of the spheres, and the White Rabbit from Wonderland lolloped about in the other. Both of them melted away into the remnants of the manuscript. All of a sudden several flawless pages appeared on the ground. It was just as we’d suspected: she was trying to repair her story. She’d already started.
My heart began to beat faster.
The princess beamed. “And now come with me,” she said, pointing to the new pages.
Obviously, I didn’t budge. She’d just implanted the rabbit and the flower into her story without batting an eyelid. And now she wanted us to go with her into her fairy tale of stolen ideas as if none of that mattered? What was she thinking? “If you think we’re jumping in there with you, then—”
“That is precisely what I think,” the princess broke in. Suddenly she no longer looked like the half-starved child we’d taken her for at first. Her true age was reflected in her eyes. This was no little girl standing before us, but a five-hundred-year-old princess. “I command it.” She sounded like somebody who was not accustomed to being disobeyed.
Still, I shrugged. What was she going to do—force me to jump?
“I command it,” the princess said again. She was still smiling. “And if you do not do as I say, I will shatter these upon the rocks.” She produced several more ideas from the pocket of her gown. I recognized the cyclone and Sleeping Beauty and shrank back in horror. Yes—she was going to force me. And unfortunately, her arguments were pretty damn persuasive.
“They will be irretrievably destroyed,” murmured the princess.
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