The Chosen Ones

by Scarlett Thomas

  Way back in the mists of time, before Mrs Beathag Hide had taken over the class, their old teacher Miss Dora Wright had given the children their first task of the school year. They’d had to write a story about their summer holiday that was not true, but that they wished had been true. Most of the children, inspired, no doubt, by Laurel Wilde books, wrote about being kidnapped by gypsies or smugglers and travelling to dark caves in rowing boats and finding piles of treasure. It was the most fun thing they had ever done at school. For some poor children, it was the most fun thing they had ever done in their lives.

  Mrs Beathag Hide rarely got the children to do anything that involved their imaginations, which she felt enjoyed quite enough expression anyway. The class sighed inwardly as it remembered Miss Dora Wright’s soft, round face and her gentle, kind encouragement.

  ‘I expect you all think it’s extremely EASY,’ said Mrs Beathag Hide. ‘After all, everyone knows how to tell a story or write a poem, don’t they? DON’T THEY?’

  The class didn’t know whether it was supposed to reply and so, as usual, remained silent.

  ‘Well, soon we will find out,’ Mrs Beathag Hide said mysteriously, ‘exactly how easy it is. Take out your pencils and your rough-work books.’

  A thin shiver of excitement streaked briefly through the chilly classroom. The children did as they were told.

  ‘Well,’ said Mrs Beathag Hide. ‘What are you waiting for? Write!’

  The children all looked down at their rough-work books. The recycled paper was made from pulped novels, magazines, newspapers and packaging. All this paper had once been covered with words. Now it was blank, and certainly seemed to want to remain that way. What on earth did Mrs Beathag Hide want them to write? If Maximilian had been here, perhaps he would have been able to help. He would have asked Mrs Beathag Hide for more precise instructions, and then probably been put in the corner as usual with the dunce’s cap on. The one that smelled of mould and dead mice.

  ‘DIFFICULT, isn’t it?’ boomed Mrs Beathag Hide, after mass writers’ block had settled on the room and made everyone wish they were dead, or at least somewhere else. ‘Well, luck has shone on you, for some unknown reason. Perhaps all the good, talented, deserving children were already inundated with luck. Or maybe they were just busy. Who knows? Prepare yourselves, children. Tomorrow afternoon we will be having an AUTHOR VISIT. Terrence Deer-Hart will be coming to tell us all about how he gets his ideas and . . .’

  From the usually silent class had broken out an excited murmur. Terrence Deer-Hart? Really? But he was a millionaire! A celebrity! He was Laurel Wilde’s main rival on the bestseller lists every month. His novels were far more distressing, complex and violent than Laurel Wilde’s, though, and one of his books for older children had over a hundred swear-words in it. His last novel had been banned from schools in at least four countries. Most children were not allowed to read his books at all.

  ‘SILENCE!’ said Mrs Beathag Hide. ‘We have been asked to prepare for the AUTHOR VISIT with some CREATIVE WRITING. For some reason, luck has shone on your pathetic unimportant lives twice in one week. You have been asked to . . .’ Here she glanced down at her notes. ‘To write a story about “travelling to other worlds”. How dull. Still, this task has come from the AUTHOR himself so you will no doubt find it exciting. Mr Deer-Hart will be reading your stories tomorrow before class. You will hand your rough-work books to me in the staff room before your first period tomorrow.’

  Festus Grimm sipped from a huge mug of steaming coffee.

  ‘Not long now,’ he said to Effie, after scrutinising his watch. He chuckled. ‘Once I popped back to the island for half an hour to get a copy of the Gazette and a Cornish pasty and then missed the window altogether. Had to wait another twenty-four hours. Or whatever the exact equivalent is here. Still, if you’ve got a good book with you . . .’ He patted the green cover of The Repertory of Kharakter, Art & Shade.

  ‘What’s it about?’ asked Effie.

  ‘Ha!’ said Festus. ‘Life. Personality. Everything. However much I think I know about myself, I always come back to this, the absolute classic on the subject of the self and personal development – not that everyone sees it that way, of course. Have you had your consultation?’

  Effie shook her head. ‘Not yet.’

  ‘I suppose you’re still a bit young. But it’s good for travellers to know their art and shade as early as possible, I think. Helps you develop. Shows you a few special skills you were not aware you had. Of course, Otherworld children sometimes have their consultations before they’re even ten. How old are you?’

  ‘Eleven.’

  ‘Hmm. Well, you’re probably ready. I’d get a good consultant, though. Not one of the fortune tellers in the market.’

  Effie remembered that Pelham Longfellow had promised to take her for a consultation in Froghole. But, of course, for that to happen, Effie would have to get back to Truelove House. And to do that, she’d have to get her box back from her father with her precious calling card in it. And to do that, she’d have to find a copy of The Chosen Ones. How complicated life was.

  ‘What exactly is an art?’ asked Effie. ‘And what’s a shade?’

  ‘How long have you got?’ said Festus, with a kind smile. ‘You should have come here a couple of hours earlier. We could have whiled away the evening indulging in amateur kharakter analysis and plotting our precise arts and shades.’ He chuckled. ‘Your art is simply your secondary ability. Everyone has one.’

  ‘What’s yours?’

  ‘Ah. The thousand-kruble question. My kharakter is true healer. Do you still say “true” before your kharakter? It goes in and out of fashion. I’ve always been a healer in some form or other, although as I usually heal with words rather than potions I wondered for a time if I was a witch, or even a mage. In the end, I had an Otherworld consultation that finally confirmed me as a true healer. But my art? For a long time I thought I was a guide. I was head of a whole team of psychologists in a hospital on the island. I’d travelled between worlds as a young man but eventually decided to give it up – with quite a lot of encouragement from the Guild. People used to believe that it was dangerous to do as we do and travel regularly between the worlds, so I stopped. But I was never happy as a manager. I liked actually healing people. But, more than that, I itched to travel again. When I travelled, I always collected rare books, knowledge and so on. For a while I wondered if I was a scholar. But in the end I realised I was an explorer – of places and of knowledge.’

  ‘So you can be wrong about your abilities?’

  ‘Oh yes. A lot of people get them quite wrong. It’s easier on the mainland, where they take it all a lot more seriously. Schools there are all about discovering and nurturing your true abilities. If someone fails at something, everyone is happy for them because they have found something to cross off their list. For example, if a boy is awful at sport everyone congratulates him on not being a warrior and he is simply given an extra music or chemistry class to see if he is in fact a composer or an alchemist.’

  ‘How many kharakters are there?’

  ‘Twenty,’ said Festus. ‘Well, if you include wizard, which not everyone does. Otherwise, nineteen. Of course the really interesting thing is the combination of kharakter and art. That’s what makes people unique.’

  ‘What combination do you think I am?’

  Festus smiled kindly. ‘You wear the Ring of the True Hero, and you’re a plucky little thing. I heard about how you defeated Leonard Levar. It’s rare to be a hero, but that surely is your kharakter. As for your art . . . That’s more difficult. You can sometimes buy do-it-yourself kits in the market, but they’re not that accurate. You need someone who can read a test properly. But at a guess . . . Maybe you’re an explorer like me?’

  ‘Does your art give you magical abilities, like your kharakter?’

  ‘Of course. And you can use all the boons, too. The best thing I ever did was to discover I was an explorer. Once the universe knows you know .
. . It’s hard to explain, but I suddenly found an explorer’s boon – a compass – and my life completely changed.’

  Festus took out of his pocket a small, silver globe that looked like a huge ball-bearing, except that it had a silver hinge and a little latch.

  ‘It’s an antique,’ he said, proudly. ‘Here. Have a look.’

  Effie picked it up, but it would not open. It started to grow hot, and heavy. She put it down just as her fingers began to burn. The boon clearly did not want her to touch it.

  ‘Seems like I’m not an explorer after all,’ she said.

  ‘Oh well, one to cross off the list,’ Festus said cheerfully. ‘But you can still look.’ He opened the silver casing and showed Effie what was inside. There was a needle, like an ordinary compass. But instead of north, south, east and west, the compass points said ‘danger’, ‘knowledge’, ‘pleasure’ and ‘charity’.

  ‘From the nineteenth century,’ Festus said. ‘It guides me on my adventures.’

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ said Effie, a little sad that her art was not also explorer and that she could not have a compass like this one.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘So what’s your shade?’ asked Effie.

  Suddenly, in the distance, a cock crowed, and a faint pink light started to drift into the room. Day was breaking somewhere in the universe, somewhere nearby.

  ‘Aha,’ said Festus, standing up. ‘Time to go. We’ll talk about shades next time perhaps. Happy travels, young hero.’

  As Festus walked off quickly towards the door to the Otherworld, Effie suddenly wanted to go after him and tell him all about how she had been expelled from her magic class and ask him what to do about it. But it was too late; he was gone. She drained her hot chocolate and went to be scanned.

  At lunchtime Wolf, Lexy and Raven met up in Griffin’s Library to talk about Maximilian and Effie and where they might be.

  ‘Do you think they’re together?’ asked Lexy.

  ‘I hope so,’ said Wolf. ‘And I hope they come back soon. I need Effie for tennis this afternoon. None of the guys can hit the ball as hard as she can. And we did say we’d work on getting our strength up.’

  Wolf was trying to sound cheerful, but secretly he felt his insides twisting up. He didn’t like it when people went missing. Like his sister, for example. Wolf wasn’t that bothered about his parents, who’d both abandoned him when he was very small. But he had never understood why his mother had taken his baby sister when she’d gone, leaving Wolf alone with his cruel uncle. Wolf longed to see his sister again. Her name was Natasha, but that was all he could really remember.

  ‘I’m scared,’ said Raven.

  ‘Why?’ said Lexy. ‘I’m sure they’re all right. They’ve probably gone to get some information on the Sterran Guandré. I heard my Aunt Octavia talking about it this morning, by the way. Apparently it’s the Otherworld name for the Wandering Star meteor shower that’s happening on Friday. I just wish they’d told us before going off like this, especially now I actually know something. She said it happens every six years. Or six-point-one or something.’

  ‘Do you think they’re in the Otherworld?’ asked Wolf. He’d never told the others, but he felt he would give anything to go to there himself. Even as he said the word he got a little pang somewhere near his heart.

  ‘Maximilian can’t go, though, can he?’ said Lexy. ‘I mean, he doesn’t have his mark or anything.’

  ‘He did go to the Underworld,’ said Raven. ‘Well, nearly.’

  ‘That’s different,’ said Lexy, although she didn’t really know anything about the Underworld at all.

  ‘Maybe they’re not even together,’ said Raven. ‘Maybe . . .’

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Wolf asked her. His friend’s eyes were suddenly full of tears. He’d never known Raven to cry about anything.

  ‘It’s Effie,’ said Raven. ‘I probably shouldn’t say anything, but . . .’ She told them about how she’d been out on Echo when she heard the news from the Cosmic Web about Effie being in trouble. ‘Then,’ she said, ‘the next morning they were all saying that . . .’ She gulped, and a single tear started to work its way down her face.

  ‘What?’ said Wolf.

  ‘They were all saying that Effie is going to die,’ said Raven. ‘On Friday.’

  ‘Oh my God,’ said Lexy.

  ‘That can’t be true,’ said Wolf. ‘We can stop it. Nothing’s set in stone. That’s what you always say. That’s what your spells are for, right?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Lexy. ‘We can stop whatever is going to happen. You can do something, surely?’

  ‘I’ve tried my best,’ said Raven. ‘But I don’t know. I’ll keep trying but . . . I’ve never heard of anything like this before.’

  ‘We’ve got to find Effie,’ said Wolf. ‘And Max. They’ll know what to do.’

  ‘We can’t tell Effie,’ said Raven, shaking her head. ‘I wasn’t even supposed to tell you.’

  ‘Why can’t we tell Effie?’ asked Wolf. ‘I’d want to know if I was going to die.’

  ‘You just can’t,’ said Raven. ‘It’s a basic rule. Don’t you remember the story Mrs Hide told us about that servant meeting with Death in the marketplace?’

  ‘Which one?’ said Wolf. He often drifted off during Mrs Beathag Hide’s stories.

  ‘I remember,’ said Lexy. ‘The one where the servant goes to the marketplace in . . . Baghdad? And meets Death there.’

  The three children cast their minds back to the dark and stormy early autumn afternoon when Mrs Beathag Hide had told them about various different fictional meetings with Death.

  In this particular story, when the servant sees Death in the marketplace, Death raises his scythe and so the servant flees. The servant then borrows his master’s horse and rides to Samarra, where he goes into hiding. Later, the master goes to the marketplace and finds Death still there. He asks him why he frightened his servant. Death says that he didn’t mean to, but he was surprised to see the servant in Baghdad when he had an appointment with him later in Samarra.

  Many of the children had experienced nightmares after this particular English class.

  ‘But what does it mean?’ said Wolf.

  ‘Well, if the servant hadn’t been scared and run away . . . I don’t know,’ said Raven. ‘It’s hard to explain. But no one should know the date of their own death. It’s a rule.’

  ‘Whose rule?’

  She shook her head. ‘I don’t know. It’s just a universal rule. You always try to escape your fate but end up running straight into it.’

  ‘Did the Cosmic Web say how she was going to die?’ Lexy asked.

  ‘No.’ Raven sighed. ‘I really shouldn’t have told you,’ she said. ‘We can’t let Effie know anything’s wrong in case we just push her further into her fate. You’ve all got to promise to act normal around her.’

  ‘We promise,’ said Lexy. ‘And we mustn’t panic. We can fix this. There’s loads of time until Friday. Raven, you need to keep listening in to the Cosmic Web and find out what else it knows. Neither of us can hear it, so we need to focus on other stuff. I’ll make some potions. A medicine bundle. Wolf will . . . Wolf?’

  Wolf was looking quite distracted.

  ‘Won’t they have been gone a long time by now?’ said Wolf.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Effie and Max.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Raven.

  ‘Didn’t Max once tell us about time differences between the worlds? And didn’t Effie say that two days in the Otherworld was like forty-five minutes here? They’ve been gone for the whole morning so far. If they are in the Otherworld, what are they doing that would take five days?’

  ‘Maybe Effie knows she’s in danger and so she’s hiding in the Otherworld?’ suggested Raven.

  ‘But she can’t stay there until Friday!’ said Lexy. ‘Her dad will have reported her missing by then. And besides, no one stays in the Otherworld for that long. I don’t think people from the Realwo
rld even can.’ Lexy worked in a portal, and so knew about things like this.

  ‘So where is she?’

  ‘And where’s Maximilian?’

  7

  When Maximilian was dressed, he was taken to be presented to his uncle.

  ‘GOOD,’ boomed Meister Lupoldus. ‘Now we shall go and dine. Franz? Bring the carriage immediately.’

  Most people found Meister Lupoldus insufferably loud, vain, ambitious and cruel. He trailed great wafts of scent behind him – patchouli, vanilla and real musk, which comes from the scent glands of dead stags – as well as the tang of cigars, strong coffee and the very darkest magic. Hanging from his belt was an athame with a diamond-studded handle. Maximilian found him fascinating.

  The carriage was painted gold and lined with red velvet. Meister Lupoldus got in first. Then Franz helped Maximilian in. The seats in the carriage were softer than anything Maximilian had ever experienced. They were much more comfortable than even his mother’s best sofa at home.

  Maximilian breathed in the evening scents. The jasmine, the perfumes, the salty, oily smells coming from the canal. It was still warm. Church bells rang all over the city. Too soon, the carriage stopped and Franz was offering Maximilian help to descend to the cobbled street. Here, things smelled less pleasant. Spilt alcohol, horse urine and decomposing fish mingled unhappily in Maximilian’s nostrils.

  ‘Let us DINE,’ said Meister Lupoldus.

  Maximilian had not seen the small door in the wall. He followed his uncle into a dense garden and along a path until they reached a large, domed gazebo. Inside, everyone was exquisitely dressed. The women all wore dark dresses and diamond jewellery. The men all had complex jewelled belts and colourful tunics. Lupoldus and Maximilian were led to a table in the corner that was raised on a small dais. Maximilian instantly realised that this was the best table in the room.

  ‘As you can see,’ said Lupoldus, ‘we can easily observe all the other diners in the room from here if we so wish. Or we can ask to be screened off if they become SHRILL or DULL.’