“Th … then your manuscript will never be any more than a few scraps of paper,” I stammered.
“You are mistaken, Amy. The literary world has so many more ideas to steal.”
I stared at her. The ingredients in her skinny hands glowed softly. The cyclone, without which The Wizard of Oz had practically ceased to exist, whirled round and round inside its glass sphere. Sleeping Beauty looked so peaceful lying there asleep as her bedroom was gradually overrun with climbing roses. There was no way the princess could be allowed to destroy these stories. I squared my shoulders. “Why?” I asked as I wondered frantically what to do. My first impulse was to run at her and try to pin her down. But she would smash the ideas before I got to her.
“Why what?” asked the princess.
“Why should we go with you?” Out of the corner of my eye I tried to sneak a glance at Will’s face. He still looked bewildered. Would I be able to give him a signal without the princess noticing? If I distracted her, perhaps he could—
“I need you for my story. It will be too empty otherwise. Now hurry up and come with me.”
I tried to think, but the same two ideas kept going round and round in my head: she was going to destroy the stories. We had to buy some time. “H … how did you escape from the dungeons?”
The princess did not reply. Instead, she fished another idea out of her pocket. The portrait of a young man floated inside the sphere, staring at us wide-eyed. It must be the picture of Dorian Gray. A moment later the shimmering idea went hurtling through the air and shattered on one of the boulders.
The crash was deafening.
The man in the picture opened his mouth in astonishment.
Then he was gone.
Forever. I stood there as if turned to stone, unable to take my eyes off the shards of glass.
She’d done it. She’d really done it.
The princess was already raising the other ideas above her head, getting ready to throw them. But I still couldn’t get my limbs to move. How could the broken glass on the ground look so ordinary? Nothing remained of its shimmering light. No hint of the idea it had once enclosed.
The princess drew back her arm and launched Sleeping Beauty through the air.
It was Will who stepped in. In a heartbeat, he had thrown himself between the idea and the boulder it was about to shatter on. There was a crack as his shoulder slammed into the rock, but he managed to catch the sphere.
“No!” he cried as the princess prepared to hurl the cyclone against one of the other archways. “We’ll come with you.”
Will got to his feet and tried to pull me toward the archway where the new pages of the old legend awaited us. “We have no choice,” he murmured, so quietly that only I could hear. “Just as long as the ideas still exist, there’s a chance we can get them back.”
At last I managed to snap out of my trance. I followed him across the stone circle to the archway. Will’s hand in mine was wet with sweat as we lay down. I couldn’t believe we were doing this. We were about to jump into a manuscript that had been destroyed long ago, so badly that nobody could survive in it anymore. This was dangerous. And it was scary.
But we had no other choice.
For a brief instant Will let go of me to pick up the far-too-white pages, and the princess wormed her way in between us. I flinched as her skinny body touched my side. The princess smelled unwashed and strangely musky. Her dirty hair brushed my cheek. I blinked, and when I opened my eyes somebody had slid the words over my face.
Words that nobody had read for a very long time.
Words that began to dance before our eyes and gradually melted into one another.
* * *
The fire was still burning.
I smelled the flames before I saw them. The moment I was sucked inside the story my nostrils filled with the stench of destruction. Acrid. Hostile.
We landed in a rugged, hilly landscape that must have been drawn from the Scottish Highlands. Almost every inch of it was burning. Everywhere you looked flames were eating away at rock formations and lush meadows, at flocks of sheep and villages in the valleys. Only the four or five pages on which we stood seemed untouched by the fire. Flowers bloomed on the hilltop at our feet, and to our left loomed a castle with silver battlements and stained-glass windows. It looked ghostly against the black smoke that towered on the horizon.
The princess spread her arms wide, twirled on the spot and shouted for joy. “I have missed you, Valleys!” she cried. “I have dreamed of you, Castle! I have returned at last, do you hear? I have returned! And this time I will stay forever. All three of us will stay forever.”
Neither the valleys nor the castle made any reply. The only sound was the fire, spitting and crackling in the distance. It sounded like malicious laughter.
As the little girl proceeded to greet the blades of grass beneath her feet and the sky overhead (parts of which were also ablaze), I seized the opportunity and launched myself at her.
It was easy—ridiculously easy, in fact. The princess went down like a ninepin, the back of her head hitting the ground hard. I held her down by the shoulders with both hands, my knee on her chest. I was so much bigger and heavier than the princess. She didn’t even try to push me off.
Instead, she smiled.
Again.
Beneath the dirt on her little face I could see freckles. Her eyes blazed, a very pale icy blue.
I pressed her harder into the grass. “Why are you doing this? Do you know how many stories you’ve ruined just to save this one? You’ve destroyed them!”
“Yes, I know,” said the princess. “But this one is my home. I can’t survive without it.”
“Desmond, Glenn, and Clyde can.”
A sneer crossed the princess’s face. “Desmond, Glenn, and Clyde have betrayed our story. They never even tried to save it—they just surrendered willingly to their fate. They want to live in the outside world! They no longer have any right to be part of this story.”
“I seem to recall you also spent quite a while holed up in a cave without stealing any ideas, didn’t you?” Why had she changed her mind all of a sudden?
The princess shook her head. A thin burn scar ran all the way up her neck and disappeared somewhere behind her ear. “When the accident happened, I only just managed to get out of the burning manuscript alive. Concealed by the smoke I clung to the kilt of one of your ancestors, Amy Lennox. But I was very weak, and I dragged myself away from the people into a cave by the sea, where I fell unconscious. For many, many years my soul drifted in the darkness and I vowed to myself that if I ever did wake up I would do whatever it took to save my story. I hoped that my loyal subjects would do the same—that perhaps they had already found a way back. And then, a few weeks ago, I succeeded at last in opening my eyes. I roamed around Stormsay. I observed the inhabitants of the island and realized that Desmond, Glenn, and Clyde had done nothing at all. That they were living among you. Serving you, even, by giving you book-jumping lessons!” The princess lowered her eyelids for a moment, and when she opened them again there was a strange glint in her eye. “I could see I was going to need a new knight,” she whispered.
“What do you mean?”
Her lips curled into a smile as she went on, in a whisper: “I needed a knight to go into the book world for me and steal me a metamorphosis, and catch a monster for me to be afraid of. And a long sleep for that monster, of course. And beautiful flowers, and the summer. And a talking animal to keep me company. And Evil—Evil was necessary too.” She laughed in my face, so suddenly and so loudly that I flinched. “I had so many ideas to replace—and for that I needed my knight.”
“But—” I stammered. So it was true—the princess hadn’t been acting alone. Somebody must have been helping her. That was why the thief had been built like a grown man and not a child. And of course it made sense that she’d got a knight to carry out the thefts for her. In her story she sent him out to kill the monster for her, after all. It was in her nature to get
other people to solve her problems. But … I swallowed hard.
In the fairy tale, Desmond had been her knight.
Suddenly I found it hard to breathe. Or was it just the smoke, filtering into my lungs and my thoughts?
The princess was still laughing, and my brain was working overtime. I felt the cogs clicking into place one by one inside my head and beginning to turn. The princess no longer saw my father as worthy of being in her story … and hadn’t she said something about a new knight just now?
It wasn’t Desmond—no, he wouldn’t have been able to get back into the book world any more than the princess herself. A wave of relief flooded through me and I let out my breath. But only briefly. Who was it, then? Who, apart from us, had come into contact with the little girl?
The cogs in my brain grated as they turned. They grated out a single word. A name.
Brock.
Brock, who had locked up the princess and given me the key. Hadn’t he said something about a princess and a knight? Had she been forcing him to steal for her? Had he been trying to warn us?
I shifted my weight and felt in my trouser pocket for the key to the jail cell.
It was gone. My pocket was empty.
Was Brock the princess’s new knight? Had she ordered him to take back the key from me and set her free? Did he have to do everything she—
There was a crash.
Damn it!
I’d only loosened my hold on the princess for a second, but it had been enough. She’d managed to reach past me into the folds of her gown, pull out another ingredient, and hurl it against the wall of the castle.
The glass sphere shattered just like the one the princess had broken in the stone circle. But this time it was different. Because now we were inside the book world, where ideas never got lost. In literature, nothing and nobody was transient.
Something was rising from the shards of glass. Something that grew larger by the second. At first I thought it was a little plume of smoke seeping from between the fragments. But the plume quickly expanded, bulging outward until it was as thick as one of the castle towers and lengthening skyward until it touched the clouds. And then it began to spin and to roar much more loudly than the fire around us.
My hair whipped across my face and wind tore fiercely at my clothes. A gust caught me and sent me stumbling a few yards backward, away from the princess, who had now got to her feet again and was gazing at the cyclone from The Wizard of Oz with shining eyes. She clapped her hands for joy, and not a hair on her matted head stirred.
I, however, was finding it hard to stay on my feet and I staggered backward into something—no, someone—who tried to hold me up. Will. He shouted something, right in my ear, but I couldn’t hear him.
The princess’s lips were moving, too, as if she were speaking to the storm, as if she were giving it an order. Then she pointed suddenly in our direction and sure enough the cyclone began to move, whirling straight toward us.
Will and I ran.
We sprinted down the hill, stumbling over rubble and our own feet. As we ran I tugged again and again at flowers and blades of grass, trying to skip to a different page. But when the page finally did start to turn, all I could see behind it was a wall of flames. Fire, as far as the eye could see. This part of the manuscript had been completely destroyed. I let go of the page and the world fell back into place.
We ran on blindly across the hillside.
The cyclone was very close now. It tore at our clothes. Will and I clung to each other desperately. Somehow we made it to the other side of the hill. This time it was Will who pulled at a stone. But we couldn’t skip back a page either. The fire seemed to have eaten away the whole story. The horizon was one big sheet of flame. There was no way we would be able to escape from this book to another part of the book world.
We were trapped, stranded on a lone island in a fiery sea with a lunatic and a cyclone that obeyed her every command.
But perhaps we could jump back to Stormsay?
I dragged Will up the slope with me, back to the castle and the princess. Back to the spot where we’d landed.
Then the princess shouted something and the storm surrounded us, encircled us, whirling so fast that we had to stand very still so as not to be caught up and hurled into the fire.
We huddled as close together as we possibly could. The storm spiraled around us in ever tighter circles. Will’s heart beat so hard that I could feel it pounding against my back.
Suddenly the roaring of the wind began to subside. It was as if somebody had turned the sound off. The cyclone still whirled around us, gray and huge and savage. But all of a sudden it was completely silent.
The princess moved closer to us. “See?” she said. “This is my kingdom. Everything and everybody here does what I say.” She sounded like a child again now. A child bragging about her ability to rage and scream until her parents did exactly what she wanted.
She gave the storm a signal and it began to shrink. It thinned out until it was only the width of a pencil, then folded in upon itself and rolled up into a ball. A moment later it was a shimmering idea once more, lying in the grass.
The princess stowed the glass sphere in the folds of her gown. “That was just a little taste. Now you know what I am capable of in this world. So you will listen to me more carefully from now on, and do as I say.” She cocked her chin. “I am going to repair the story now and then you, Amy, my new—”
“You know what? You can forget it,” I hissed.
The princess glared at me. “You do know I can throw you into the fire whenever I want?”
I snorted. “Why don’t you, then?” I cried, thinking of the poisoned cake, the falling boulder, and the dagger attacks. “It wouldn’t be the first time you’ve tried to kill me. I’m a bit surprised you’ve suddenly stopped trying, to be honest.”
She shrugged. “I have changed my mind. At first I did want you out of the way, it’s true. I was afraid you might thwart my plans. And I didn’t want to share my knight. But I’ve changed my mind. Now I want both of you for my story.”
“What do you mean?” An uneasy feeling settled in the pit of my stomach.
“Where did that stupid rabbit go?” The princess stood on tiptoe and peered down the hill.
But I was not to be deterred. “What do you mean?” I asked again.
The princess sank back onto her heels. “Once the story has been repaired, you two will be the characters. Look, I’ll show you.” She cleared her throat. “I choose you,” she announced majestically. “Kneel.”
“Pff,” I scoffed. The princess must be even crazier than I’d imagined if she thought we were just going to let her turn us into puppets in her fairy tale.
But there was movement beside me. I only saw it out of the corner of my eye, but that was enough. I spun around.
Beside me, Will had lowered himself to the ground. He was bowing his head reverently.
“Stop it!” I cried, shaking him. What was wrong with him all of a sudden? “Will is never going to be your knight,” I hissed at the princess. I was so angry I spat the words at her. “Leave him alone!”
The princess turned to Will as if I hadn’t said a word, and spoke to him again. “Do you swear that you will hunt and kill the monster and that you will not rest until I, your princess, am safe once more? Do you swear it upon your life?” she asked, in a strange singsong voice.
Then Will lifted his head and looked at her. His face lit up. He gazed raptly at the dirty little girl. The thief. The miserable, filthy—
“I swear it upon my life,” replied Will. He sounded oddly lifeless.
“No he doesn’t,” I cried, launching myself at him. I slapped him as hard as I could. First on the right cheek, then the left, then the right again. And just as I’d hoped, the veil that had fallen over his eyes lifted. He blinked and looked at me. “Amy!” he whispered. “Is … is everything okay? Did the cyclone get us?”
I shook my head and pulled him to his feet. Will looked aroun
d as if seeing the hill, the castle, and indeed the whole of the story we found ourselves in, for the very first time.
The princess grinned. “Very well,” she said. “Then how about Will the monster?”
Quick as a flash, she pulled two ingredients from the pocket of her gown and flung them at us. The first was the sphere containing the transformation of Dr. Jekyll into Mr. Hyde. It hit Will on the temple, where it smashed. A shimmering liquid ran down his cheek. And then the second idea shattered against his chest. It was the stolen monster from The Odyssey.
“No!” I screamed. My first impulse was to reach out and brush the shards of glass off Will’s clothes. But desperate as I was to protect him from this lunatic, something held me back. Perhaps it was the sight of Will’s face which, from one moment to the next, had stiffened into a kind of mask. Suddenly he didn’t look like himself anymore. Was it just my imagination or were his nostrils getting wider?
Will’s shoulders trembled. Inch by inch his neck grew longer. Then everything happened very fast. In the blink of an eye, his stormy-blue eyes turned purple and then blazing red, his nose became a snout, and his teeth grew long and sharp. And two extra heads sprouted from the crook of his neck.
I screamed. Dread coursed through my veins, ice-cold.
“Do you know, Amy—I am glad I didn’t kill you,” the princess declared. “For if I had, who would my monster hunt? Every story needs a victim. Somebody to terrify. Somebody who dies at the end.”
The creature that stood before me was not Will. It was a beast the size of a house, with three heads on three long necks that writhed and snaked in all directions. The monster’s body was covered with spikes. Its knife-sharp claws dug deep into the earth and its six blazing red eyes watched me hungrily.
The princess nodded to it in encouragement.
It was him.
It had been him all along.
How could he have failed to see it?
It must be a curse, laid upon him when he had become the princess’s knight.
The curse was a terrible one.
Even now he could barely fight it.
The Book Jumper Page 25