by Jan Siegel
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean... Thank you. Thank you for saving my life.’
‘No sweat,’ the boy lied. ‘I just wasn’t expecting random dinosaurs in Hampstead...’
‘You’re bleeding. Come into the kitchen. I’ll patch it up.’
‘Better give the beastie another blast, just in case...’
The big claw had made a cut in his arm, long but not too deep. Pen bundled it rather inexpertly in clean tea-cloths since she didn’t know where to find the bandages.
‘I thought you lived here?’ the boy said.
‘Sort of.’ She saw he was trembling, perhaps from some kind of delayed shock. Then she realised she was trembling too.
‘We have to put it back,’ she went on. ‘You must help me. I can’t do it on my own.’
‘I don’t must anything.’
‘Sorry,’ she said again. ‘I mean... please?’
‘Put it back where?’
‘The Jurassic, I suppose. That has to be where it came from. I don’t want the butler to find it.’
The boy skimmed over an assortment of queries and plumped for: ‘You’ve got a butler?’ He sounded impressed.
‘Yes, but he’s out. We’ve got to move it before he gets back. If I take the head, can you get the legs? And zap it if it looks like coming round.’
‘Where are we lugging it to?’
‘The broom cupboard next door.’
The boy didn’t say anything. Shock can have that effect sometimes: you don’t ask the obvious questions because part of your brain’s on hold. The unconscious velociraptor was heavy and awkward; they had to drag rather than lift it, its tail kept knocking into the furniture and its head lolled on the end of the serpent-neck and had to be supported against Pen’s chest. The heavy jaws and jagged teeth were much too close for comfort.
In the utility room, she said: ‘My name’s Pen.’ She would normally have introduced herself as Penelope, but when someone has just saved you from a hungry velociraptor it’s time to by-pass the formalities.
‘I’m Gavin.’
‘Nice to meet you.’ Mrs Harkness had taught her that good manners were obligatory at all times.
‘Ditto,’ said Gavin. ‘At least... maybe. Does this sort of thing happen to you often?’
‘No,’ Pen said, amending it on the recollection of several conversations with a dead man. ‘Not exactly.’
They bumped the dinosaur up the steps to Number 7, gave it another zap with the stun-gun, and folded back a rug so they could slide it across the hall floor.
‘When I was outside,’ Gavin said, ‘these houses didn’t look joined up. I mean, I know they aren’t. I only rang your doorbell because I couldn’t find the front door to Number 7.’
‘That’s the front door to Number 7,’ Pen explained. ‘It’s a spatial interface.’
‘What the frock’s that?’
‘What the –?’
‘My mum says it. She doesn’t like the f-word, so she says “frock” instead.’
‘Your mum swears by a dress and your nan’s afraid of being raped? Your family sound a bit – weird.’
‘You’ve got a butler,’ Gavin said accusingly, ‘and a dinosaur in your front hall. That’s weird.’
Pen backed towards the broom cupboard. Beyond, there was the vista of watermeadow and jungle, the long shadows of early morning reaching out from the trees. The sun had risen a good deal further and a variety of animals and/or birds were making a variety of screeching and whooping noises.
Gavin said: ‘Is that the broom cupboard?’
‘Yes.’
‘There’s a jungle in it.’
‘Yes...’
‘What is this? Frocking Narnia?’
‘Please mind your language.’ Pen knocked her elbow against the door-frame, said: ‘Bugger,’ and had reversed into the long grass before she had time to consider the risk. But the Jurassic, an era short on human beings, showed no immediate sign of taking over. Her mind stayed resolutely in the twenty-first century.
From this side the door was set in a gap in an enormous hollow tree. They hauled the velociraptor through it and dumped it on the edge of the meadow. Gavin gazed around him with an expression of awe on his face.
He said: ‘Wow.’ And: ‘This is wicked.’
‘Come back,’ said Pen. ‘Come back now.’
‘But–’
‘Your arm’s bleeding through the tea-cloths. The blood-smell might attract anything. According to a programme I saw recently, they think tyrannosaurs were scavengers as well as hunters. Supposing a tyrannosaur rolls up? Are you sure your baby stun-gun will work on something that big?’
Reluctantly, Gavin allowed her to drag him back into the house, closing the cupboard behind them. Then they returned to 7A. The door in between shut and, rather surprisingly, locked again, though the claw-marks in the panels would remain. Pen moved the coat-rail and took Gavin upstairs to the bathroom, where a further search located enough sticking plasters to hold the cut closed (it took five), and they washed the tea-cloths out in the sink.
‘Quorum mustn’t know about this,’ Pen said, adding: ‘He’s the butler.’
‘You ashamed of me?’
‘Not you, idiot. The dinosaur.’
‘Okay. That figures. How come you have a butler, anyway? Are you very rich?’
‘No,’ Pen said. ‘It’s a long story. How come you were trying to get into Number 7?’
‘I was looking for the owner.’
‘There isn’t one,’ Pen said. ‘But I’m the... the temporary custodian.’ She didn’t like ‘caretaker’; it wasn’t impressive enough.
‘I was told,’ Gavin said, ‘the house was left to Bartlemy Goodman.’
‘Oh,’ said Pen, slightly nonplussed. ‘Why d’you want Bartlemy Goodman?’
‘Two long stories,’ said Gavin.
For the first time, she looked at him properly. She saw classic cheekbones, velvet brown eyes, a mochaccino complexion, a sudden smile which most girls would undoubtedly consider heart-stopping. But Pen had determined some time ago that her heart would not be easily stopped. She didn’t smile back.
He saw the pale face, the pale freckles, the pale red hair. He thought she was spiky and posh and probably too clever by half. And nowhere near as pretty as his ex-girlfriend, Josabeth Collins. In fact, not pretty at all, just sort of neat-looking, with the neatness of someone whose face has no obvious defects, no outstanding assets.
Nonetheless...
Anyone with a velociraptor in their broom cupboard is bound to be interesting.
‘Let’s have something to drink,’ Pen suggested. ‘Then we can talk.’
‘Beer?’ Gavin said hopefully.
‘Tea,’ said Pen.
Eade, twenty-first century
THE WITCH APPROACHED the gingerbread house as if she belonged there. The back-door key was where it had always been, under a stone beside the overgrown tangle of the herb garden. She murmured the spellword to release the stone, picked up the key and let herself in.
In Bartlemy’s day, the door might have been left open; he had never needed the security of locks and bolts. But that day was long gone.
She went through the kitchen, remembering the aroma of past cooking, half imagining it was still there. In the drawing room she rolled back the carpet to expose the blackened scar of a hundred magic circles. She lit a fire on the hearth, not a spellfire but a real one, with logs from the log-pile and scrunched-up newspaper and the hint of a charm to get it going. The room felt slightly clammy, the way an unlived-in room will, but the fire warmed it. Then she sprinkled spellpowder round the perimeter of the circle, drew the runes of protection, spoke a word in the language of power, the language of the Stone from long ago. ‘Fiumé!’
The powder sparked into flame – not a bright ring of flame but a thin fireline, scarcely more than a glittering thread. Still, it was enough. The witch was young and very inexperienced: she had never done this on her own. But she knew what to do. She
began the incantation.
Presently, a spirit appeared at the centre of the circle. It was child-sized, vaguely female, with long filmy hair and the wistful expression of someone who is always dreaming about chocolate while her mother feeds her on greens. The witch stared at it in annoyance.
‘Who are you? I summoned the Child.’
‘I am a child,’ the sylph pointed out. ‘I’ve been a child for nearly three thousand years, so I should know.’
‘I summoned the Child,’ said the witch. ‘Eriost – Varli – whatever else he likes to call himself.’
‘He’s busy,’ said the sylph. ‘But I don’t think he’d come for you, anyhow. I know you, even though you hide outside the boundary. You’re just a village witch – the granddaughter and great-granddaughter of village witches. You shouldn’t be drawing the circle. This is High Magic. It’s way beyond you.’
‘I’ve done it before,’ the witch snapped. ‘Give me your name.’
‘If you were any good,’ the spirit yawned, ‘you’d know it.’
‘Then I will give you a name,’ said the witch, ‘and beware, for it will stick to you for the next three thousand years – it will stick like a sticking spell – and to all who call on that name you will have to answer. I name you Airhead, also called Peabrain, spirit of –’
‘My name is Finwala,’ the sylph said grudgingly. ‘But I can’t help you. Whatever you want to know, I don’t know it.’
‘Airhead suits you better, Finwala,’ said the witch. ‘Why is the Child busy?’
‘Because,’ said Finwala. ‘All the Old Spirits are busy. Too busy to talk to you, anyway.’
‘Busy with what?’ demanded the witch. It wasn’t what she had meant to ask, but now she had asked, she wanted to know.
‘Changes,’ said the sylph. ‘There is trouble afoot.’
‘There always is,’ the witch said crossly. ‘Tell me something I don’t know. What kind of trouble is it this time?’
‘None of your business,’ snapped the sylph.
‘Inserré! I bind you in the circle – you can’t leave until I give the Command – you can’t leave until you answer my question. What kind of trouble–’
But the sylph grew pale and faint, fading to a wispy shade which seemed to tremble in an unseen wind. Her voice shrank to a far-off murmur, an echo within an echo: ‘None of your business – business, business – trouble... trouble... TROUBLE...’ Then, unexpectedly, she began to scream, a thin high wail that broke in the middle, like a banshee with laryngitis.
The witch let her go.
She paused for a few minutes, scowling. In the circle smoke-shapes melted and changed, elementals seeking a way in where she had left an opening, the microsprites that infest any magical process.
Eventually, she resumed the incantation. She did not intend to try the major spirits again – evidently they weren’t listening, and she hadn’t the power to get through – but there were others lower down the hierarchy who might respond to her call. She leafed through one of her books till she came to the section headed Goblins, Gremlins and Grinnocks, and placed her finger on the page with her eyes shut. When she opened them, she had a name.
‘Simmoleon.’ She repeated the summons, in the spelltongue and again in English for added impact. ‘I summon Simmoleon.’
Within the circle, the smoke-shapes blurred – shrank inwards – condensed into solidity with disconcerting speed. A figure was standing there, a figure less than three feet high, knotty-muscled and knobble-jointed, its overlarge head resembling a lumpy and unshaven potato. It sported an ugly pout, toothbrush eyebrows, and a squint. A grinnock, thought the witch with resignation. Her knowledge of such things was rudimentary, but she had once been told a grinnock was a being somewhere between a goblin and a dwarf, solitary, sullen, and vicious: only lack of height kept them from being serial killers. Being a failed psychopath in a world too big for you would, the witch reflected, be enough to embitter anyone.
‘I won’t answer your questions!’ the creature said.
‘I haven’t asked any.’
‘Then don’t bother, because I won’t answer!’ It spoke with an air of triumph out of all proportion to its size.
‘Fine,’ said the witch. ‘I’ll pen you in the circle – I’ll pen you here for five hundred years – I’ll taunt you with plagues and phantoms–’
‘Ye wouldn’t know a plague if it bit you i’ the arse.’
‘Oh yeah?’ The witch muttered a few words under her breath. Inside the circle, tiny green flecks came buzzing out of the air and zoomed in on the grinnock, swarming round his head and stinging his horny skin. The spellring had already attracted too many elementals, and it was easy enough to work on them. He flapped his many-fingered hands, trying to beat them off, swearing in the language of his kind.
‘There’s a word for the likes o’ you,’ he said, ‘and it isna witch!’
‘Five hundred years,’ she reiterated. She was short on power, but not on attitude.
It took nearly ten minutes and a range of elemental manifestations to subdue the grinnock, and by then she was concerned the perimeter might be wearing thin.
‘I’m looking for someone,’ the witch said.
‘Puir man.’
‘His name’s Bartlemy Goodman.’
‘Niver heard o’ him.’
‘He’s a wizard... occasionally,’ the witch elaborated. ‘And a very good cook.’
Unexpectedly, a glimmer showed in the grinnock’s beady little eyes. ‘Can he make them buns,’ he said, ‘wi’ sugar on the outside, and the jam i’ the middle that comes out all oozy oozy when ye take a bite? I bet he canna. They call them dog-nuts, though I niver saw no dog wi’–’
‘Of course he can,’ the witch asserted with confidence. ‘He’s the best cook in the world. But I didn’t know grinnocks liked doughnuts.’
‘They call me Sugartop,’ Simmoleon volunteered. ‘Acos o’ my liking for the dog-nuts, and the gen’ral sweetness o’ my naitcher.’
‘I should have guessed,’ said the witch. ‘Find Bartlemy Goodman for me, and he’ll make you the doggiest dog-nuts you’ve ever eaten, with the sugar all crunchy on the outside, and the dough as light as an air-bubble, and the ooziest jam in the middle made from two hundred per cent fruit...’
‘I dinna believe it,’ said Simmoleon, but there was weakening in his voice.
Being a witch is less about magic than learning which buttons to press. ‘When you bite into it the jam comes welling out and goes dripping down your chin like... like...’ Perhaps because of the company she kept, the only images she could think of were to do with blood.
But her words had done the work of twenty plagues.
‘Maybe I could ask around,’ Simmoleon said with an air of profound reluctance. ‘I could be putting an ear to the ground, and listening to the smalltalk o’ the worms. What if he’s dead?’
‘He won’t be dead,’ said the witch, pushing aside the recollection of the Tarot. ‘He’s been alive too long. It’s become a habit.’
‘Ah,’ said the grinnock. ‘One o’ those.’
‘There’s something else,’ said the witch. ‘I’m hearing a rumour about the Old Spirits. Some new kind of trouble...’
‘What would the likes o’ me be hearing about the likes o’ them?’
‘Rumour talks,’ the witch retorted. ‘And ears like yours would hear it. Think of dog-nuts. Where do you stand on chocolate cake?’
‘Chocolate cake?’ The grinnock’s ugly face grew almost dreamy. ‘Real chocolate, wi’ the icing an inch thick, all sugary buttery cocoa, and the sponge so moist and dark, dark, and that stuff i’ the middle they call gooache?’
‘Ganache,’ said the witch. ‘Yeah. Though you ice an inch thick, to that flavour must you come.’ She had studied Hamlet. ‘People have committed murder for Bartlemy Goodman’s chocolate cake. As dark as the dark powers...’
‘Dinna mention him,’ Simmoleon hissed. ‘If I start a-telling you things, folk will be know
ing, and they’ll send me into Limbo for all time...’
‘You said, don’t mention him. Which him?’
‘Don’t be naming him! If ye name him, he’ll hear ye, or so they say – he’ll hear ye and come to ye – though I’m thinking it’d keep him busy, the way humans throw his name around.’
‘Give me one name,’ said the witch. ‘Whisper it. A name humans use.’
‘Aye, well... He’s been a god and he’s been a demon and he’s been the King o’ Elfland. These days, they say he wears a suit like a man and sits at the top o’ the Dark Tower pulling the strings that make the world fall down. Time was, ye’d be calling him the Divil, though now-and-now it’s more like sir. But–’
Azmordis. The witch mouthed the name, though she did not say it.
‘Ssssshht!’ The grinnock glanced round, furtive and scared. ‘They say... they say – he’s... retiring...’ His potato-brown skin turned the colour of cold pasta.‘See, he’s been here since the dawn o’ time – he saw the first fish crawl out o’ the sea and grow legs – he saw the first man and the first blow and he smelled the first blood ever shed. When the apple o’ Good ’n Evil was baked in a pie, he was there to dish it out. Now, he’s had enough – enough o’ plots and schemes, enough o’ Men and their ways, maybe even enough o’ power. Aye, it’ll be a dark day for mortals when he’s gone.’
‘How so?’ said the witch, chilled and vaguely baffled.
‘Ye don’t follow, do ye? When the old king goes, what happens? What happens when the throne is empty? Ye’ve a saying among Men, better the Divil ye know...’
‘Who would take over from the Devil?’ the witch said slowly.
‘That’s the question. That’s the big question. And it ain’t one I’ll be answering, though ye plague me all the way to eternity.’
He was becoming dim and insubstantial even as he spoke. The witch could not hold him; the blip of new fear broke her concentration. She was stood there, shivering, while the spellfire crumbled into ash and the dark came through the windows.
London, twenty-first century
IN THE KITCHEN at 7A, Pen looked for biscuits to go with the tea. Unfortunately, all she could find was Hobnobs. Somehow, she just didn’t fancy Hobnobs any more, but Gavin accepted with enthusiasm. He looked the enthusiastic type, she decided. There was a kind of glow about him – the glow of someone who was adored by his family, popular with friends, indulged by teachers, someone who assumed life would always be nice to him because – so far – it always had been. Pen remembered her friend Matty talking once about children ‘born in the sun’, beloved by the Fates – people for whom the toast always falls buttered side up. Gavin definitely looked like that, Pen thought, a sunshiny person, the sort of guy who, when confronted with a velociraptor, would invariably have a stun-gun in his pocket. Someone with more than their fair share of natural luck.