The Chosen Ones

by Scarlett Thomas

  ‘What appeal?’

  Raven smiled and shook her head. ‘Have you been living on another planet?

  ‘Sort of. Well, I guess I’ve been in the Otherworld quite a lot.’

  Until Effie had lost her calling card she had been becoming much more interested in the Otherworld than the Realworld. Her time spent in the Realworld had started to feel less and less important, and she had sort of stopped paying close attention to it. She only now realised she didn’t even know why her father wanted her copy of The Chosen Ones. All she knew was she had to find it so she could get her box back, so she could go back to the Otherworld.

  ‘So you don’t even know why your dad wants a copy of the book?’

  ‘He said something about selling it for fifty pounds. But apart from that I don’t know.’

  ‘OK, so basically Mum and Skylurian are getting people all over the world to return their copies of The Chosen Ones and giving them fifty pounds or whatever the equivalent is in their own currency. Some people have realised how much they want the copies of the book back and are asking for more money. They’re paying whatever people ask – although don’t tell your dad that bit.’

  ‘But why are they doing it at all?’

  ‘Because they’re producing a limited-edition single volume copy of the book. Basically making it so there’s only one copy left in the entire world.’

  ‘Why would they want to do that?’

  ‘Because there’s a very rich man who is prepared to buy the last copy on Earth for a billion pounds. Albion Freake.’

  ‘But . . .’

  Whatever Effie was going to say was lost in a sudden urgent flapping and tapping on the window pane. Raven opened the window and a robin hopped in and landed on her hand. Raven soon developed a dreamy look, nodding and smiling, as if she were talking to the robin. Maybe she was. After another nod she gave the robin a little kiss, and then he hopped back onto the windowsill and flew away.

  ‘How peculiar,’ said Raven.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘There’s a boy lost on the moor.’ Raven gulped. ‘And apparently I know him. The Cosmic Web’s a bit weak coming from the moor at this time of day, but when the robin heard it was someone connected with me . . .’

  ‘Who is it?’ said Effie. ‘You don’t think it could be . . .?’

  ‘Maximilian!’ said both girls together.

  ‘We’ll have to go and rescue him,’ said Raven. ‘Can you ride?’

  ‘Yes,’ Effie said immediately, without thinking. She didn’t mean to lie. On some level she genuinely thought she could ride – so many of the books she’d read in the Otherworld featured heroes on horseback. And anyway, how hard could it be? She hurried after Raven, down one set of stairs and then the creaking spiral staircase that led into the main sitting room of the folly. There was still no sign of Laurel or Skylurian.

  Raven threw together some supplies – Polo mints and sugar lumps for the horses; more cake for her and Effie and Maximilian. She wrapped the cake in foil and put it in her rucksack. Effie noticed that she also put in her wonde – the boon that Effie had given her just a few weeks ago when they had both epiphanised. It was a thin stick that had been cut from a particularly mystical hazel tree several centuries before.

  Effie followed Raven to the boot room. There were so many old pairs of jodhpur boots, gloves and riding hats in there that it didn’t take long for Raven to find everything Effie needed. It helped that Effie was the same shoe size as Laurel Wilde.

  ‘Won’t she mind?’ Effie said, as Raven passed her a pair of her mother’s beautiful but hardly worn brown leather boots.

  ‘She hasn’t got time to ride any more,’ said Raven. ‘She’ll just be happy to know that Jet’s been out.’

  The girls both grabbed comfortable old waxed jackets from the hooks by the door, and a saddle and bridle each (Effie just copied the way Raven held hers), and then went out into the cold evening.

  Echo snorted gently into the still early evening air when he heard Raven’s footsteps approaching. Poor Jet hadn’t been ridden for days and was standing sadly in his stable, not really expecting anything good to happen. He certainly wasn’t expecting . . . Well. Who was this child now opening his stable door? Jet had half a mind to kick her, but there was something about her that stopped him. She was . . . She was . . .

  ‘Do you know how to tack-up?’ asked Raven.

  ‘No,’ said Effie. ‘But I’m sure I can try.’

  Raven laughed. ‘Ha ha! You’re so funny. It takes years to learn to tack-up properly. And Jet likes it done a certain way anyway.’

  Effie watched while Raven expertly put saddles and bridles on both horses. Effie didn’t even know the names for half the things Raven was doing. Echo and Jet both stamped and pawed at the ground a couple of times and when one whinnied, the other followed, their hot breath almost freezing in the November air.

  When Jet was ready, Raven led him over and held on to his reins.

  ‘Well, on you get,’ she said to Effie.

  Effie looked at the large pony in front of her. Jet was black and shiny, with a strange glint in his eyes. She suddenly felt afraid. She didn’t, in reality, even know how to get on a horse. He was so much bigger than she’d thought, and . . .

  ‘Come on,’ said Raven. ‘We don’t want Maximilian to get even more lost.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Effie.

  She approached Jet rather gingerly, but the big pony stood completely still while Effie slipped her foot into the stirrup and mounted him in one swift movement. It was easier than she’d thought. Raven handed Effie the reins.

  ‘I know you’ve done this before,’ said Raven. ‘But just in case you’ve forgotten, you have to put your feet like this, and hold the reins like this, and . . .’ She expertly adjusted Effie’s legs and hands and changed the length of the stirrups so they were just right. And then, with a lot less fuss, she mounted Echo and trotted off down the narrow path in the direction of the bridleway onto the moor.

  Effie didn’t know what to do next. How did you get a horse to move? She remembered one riding lesson long ago with her primary school class. Was it that you kicked a horse to make it go, or did you pull the reins? What was it they did in the books? Effie tried a little experimental nudge with her legs and, to her surprise, Jet began walking forwards. It felt very peculiar being this high up, sitting on an animal who was moving underneath you in that odd side-to-side sort of way.

  ‘Come on!’ called Raven in front. ‘Let’s canter!’

  Something – perhaps just hearing the word ‘canter’ – made Jet lurch from his stately walk into a sort of fast trot, with Effie clinging on with her knees and pulling at the reins, trying hard not to fall off.

  ‘I say, old thing,’ said a slow, deep voice in Effie’s head. It was a refined, old-fashioned voice of a sort you might find in antique books. ‘Would you mind not pulling so hard on my bit, please? It rather jars the teeth. There’s a good sport.’

  Effie immediately relaxed the reins a little. But where was this voice coming from? It couldn’t be . . . Was it Jet who was speaking to her? But how? Effie wasn’t a witch! Surely only witches could talk to animals!

  ‘Sorry,’ said Effie, with her mind.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Jet.

  ‘But how am I going to stay on?’ Effie asked. Now that she wasn’t clinging to the reins so hard, it really did feel as if she might fall off at any moment.

  ‘Hold my mane, of course. NOT LIKE THAT, beloved child. Don’t pull. That’s better. Good. Now, are you ready?’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Oh, I can go a LOT faster than this.’

  ‘Well—’

  ‘Good. Let us vamos,’ said Jet. ‘You’ll live, I’m sure. All true heroes know how to ride horses, I believe. It’s in the literature.’

  12

  The bell tinkled as someone opened the door to Mrs Bottle’s Bun Shop. It had been a quiet afternoon and Lexy was longing for something interesting to happen. The
y never got very much custom at Mrs Bottle’s Bun Shop anyway and lately the café was being used more as a hang-out for local students than an actual portal. After all, no one knew exactly where the portal went, or how to get back. Among the epiphanised young of the city this made it rather cool. But of course no one cool went anywhere on a Tuesday.

  ‘Hang on,’ called Lexy’s mother, Hazel, wiping her hands on a tea towel. She walked through to the front of the shop. ‘Oh, it’s you, Arnold.’

  Arnold? But that was Dr Green’s first name. Surely he couldn’t be here, now, could he? Lexy put down the tonic she was working on – a deep red rosehip syrup – and peeked out of the kitchen. It was Dr Green! For some reason Lexy suddenly felt shy. She wanted to say hello, but found she couldn’t. What if he didn’t remember her? What if he did? She felt like she might die if he said anything to her at all.

  So she went back into the kitchen and pretended to be working on her tonic. Everyone knows that rosehip syrup needs careful straining. But Lexy promptly forgot that bit, with the result that her tonic now had lots of semi-poisonous hairs floating in it. Luckily she was just about to drop the whole thing on the floor, so it didn’t really matter.

  ‘Octavia’s upstairs,’ said Hazel to Dr Green, after they had exchanged a few words of small talk. ‘Go straight up. I think she’s expecting you.’

  Another date! It must be. As predicted, Lexy dropped the whole jar of rosehip syrup on the floor as she tried to get another look at Dr Green as he went through the door that led to Lexy’s Aunt Octavia’s flat. He was dressed almost exactly as he had been the day before, in a brown lounge suit and sensible brown shoes. But, perhaps in honour of his date, today he was wearing a flamboyant turquoise silk shirt that so didn’t go with the rest of his ensemble it almost did.

  Lexy’s Aunt Octavia had never had much luck with men. Her first boyfriend had unfortunately turned out to be a vampire demon who had come into the bun shop supposedly looking for a way home to the Otherworld. Demons are, as everyone knows, usually projections of a person’s unspoken fears or problems. This vampire represented a fear of commitment in an otherwise quite nice baker from a small Otherworld village. Octavia never got to meet the baker, but she certainly would never forget the demon.

  Then there was the good-looking journalist from the Gazette, who, it turned out, only wanted to find out about portals and the Otherworld so that he could do an exposé. After that came the artist who was mainly interested in the light in Octavia’s flat, and a young oboe player who kept inviting all of his musician friends round for silent discos, and eventually ran off with one of them.

  As a result of all this, Octavia Bottle had completely given up on men. But then Arnold had come along. Dear, sweet Arnold. Their eyes had met across the long wooden table at the most recent Old Town branch meeting of the Guild of Craftspeople. The subject had been the newly epiphanised children in the area, and what should be done about them. Octavia never had much to say at these meetings, but this time she had been able to describe the way the young Truelove girl, Euphemia, known as Effie, had wandered in on that cold afternoon in October, bless her, with her bag of rare boons, not even knowing she’d just epiphanised.

  Effie soon got used to the smooth, fast motion of the horse beneath her. She began to feel warm, and she realised this was partly because Jet himself was getting hot. Steam was coming off his sleek black flanks and through his big nostrils. As he gathered pace, Effie began to feel almost weightless, as if she were flying. Jet didn’t say very much more to her, just the occasional ‘Hold on!’ or ‘Watch out!’ or – just once, when going through a small woodland glade – ‘Duck!’

  Riding a horse was the most exhilarating thing Effie had ever done. She could see why Raven liked it so much. The air was soft and cold, and every so often the sky lit up with another shooting star. The soundlessness of the moor was like nothing Effie had ever experienced – except perhaps in the Otherworld. The moor felt like the Otherworld in several other ways, too. It had the same calm, dreamy atmosphere of being very far away from everything else.

  After about ten more minutes, Raven and Echo slowed. Effie pulled gently on Jet’s reins and he slowed to a fast trot, a slow trot and then a walk. It was now quite dark and Effie couldn’t see very much. There were shapes that looked a little like houses, although most of them without roofs.

  ‘Where are we?’ she called to Raven.

  ‘We’re quite near to Maximilian, I think,’ Raven called back. ‘I just need to find . . . Aha.’

  In the dark, Effie could see three shapes coming out of one of the roofless houses. They looked like large floating cotton-wool balls, or very low, very small clouds. As they got closer, Effie could see that they were sheep. The fact they were baaaing loudly also helped to identify them. They seemed to be baaaing at Raven. They must have heard something through the Cosmic Web.

  ‘They say your friend is just beyond here, over the river,’ Jet translated for Effie.

  ‘They say—’ Raven began to tell Effie.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Effie. ‘Jet told me.’

  ‘But how . . .?’

  Effie shrugged. ‘It turns out that true heroes can talk to horses. And ride them, too. Come on, let’s go!’

  Effie nudged Jet with her heels and he almost immediately broke into a canter, just like horses in old films about the Wild West. This time, Raven was the one following. The girls cantered past the ruined crofts – more roofless houses – to the edge of a river. It was low tide and the horses gratefully drank some water, then walked across.

  ‘This is where I saw it,’ Raven said to Effie, as their horses slowly crossed the river. ‘Near here. There was a kind of . . . I don’t know. Like something shimmering and mysterious in the air. I can’t see it now that it’s dark.’

  ‘What do you think it was?’

  ‘I don’t know. But it’s strange that Maximilian is somewhere nearby. I wonder how he got here. I wonder if there’s a connection.’

  ‘If he is still here.’

  ‘He is. The sheep say he has been walking around in circles for the last two hours. I suppose mages don’t really have that many outdoor survival skills.’

  Effie couldn’t help smiling in the darkness. ‘I suppose not.’

  ‘Come on. He must be around here somewhere.’

  Before long Effie heard a whinnying, harrumphing sound that wasn’t coming from Jet or Echo. They had come to a slope on which there were wild ponies grazing. One of them came up to the girls and started explaining where Maximilian was. Apparently he had tried to read the ponies’ minds to find out how to survive in the wilderness. After that he had tried eating grass, been sick, fallen over, cursed all of nature and then cried.

  The horses made their way carefully up an ancient track to the top of the hill. And there, shivering and alone, was Maximilian.

  ‘Are you a mirage?’ he asked, gloomily.

  ‘Don’t be silly. You get mirages in the desert, not on the moor,’ said Raven.

  ‘I thought I was going to die. Have you got any food?’

  Raven took the cake out of her rucksack and gave it to Maximilian. He devoured it greedily, crumbs flying everywhere, all the while saying incomprehensible things about having been locked in a dungeon and having to escape and rescue his master. At some point he took out a small business card and waved it around, saying, ‘What use is this in such a bleak wilderness?’ While he was babbling away, Raven gave the horses sugar lumps and Polos.

  ‘Right,’ she said to Maximilian. ‘Can you ride?’

  ‘Of course not!’ he said. ‘I think it’s become quite clear that I don’t really do wilderness.’

  ‘Well, we have to work out how to get you back. Do you think you could hold on to one of us while we—’

  ‘Wait,’ said Maximilian. ‘Actually . . .’ He looked at Raven quite intensely. ‘Would you mind if I . . .?’ He stared into her eyes. ‘Just there. I won’t look at anything private, just the bits about . . . OK. Go
t it.’

  ‘What did you just do?’ said Raven, rubbing her head.

  ‘Learned how to ride,’ said Maximilian. ‘I’ve sort of discovered how to take things like that from someone’s mind. It’s a long story. Thank you. But yes, now I can ride. I don’t think I’m going to like it, but I can do it.’

  ‘OK,’ said Raven. ‘You take Echo. Be kind to him. He doesn’t like being kicked or pulled too much. I’ll hold him while you get on.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’ Effie asked.

  Raven smiled shyly. ‘Well,’ she said. ‘There is something I’ve been meaning to try.’

  She reached into her rucksack again and pulled out two thin sticks and what looked like a small dead shrub. She held them together in one hand, waved the other hand over them, and . . .

  The pieces fell to the ground.

  ‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘OK, Raven. Concentrate. Maybe if I try . . .’

  She went through she same actions again, with the same result. Echo was pawing the ground and starting to get impatient. He wanted to vamos, ideally to where his oats, alfalfa and straw were. It was getting late. And he didn’t like this lump on his back either. He smelled of culture and intellectuals. Echo didn’t have much patience for such things. Should he try to throw him? Maybe not just yet.

  Raven again put the three sticks together in her right hand. This time when she waved her left hand over them there was a little spark. Effie realised she’d seen someone else do something like this recently. The pieces had fused together to form . . .

  ‘A broomstick!’ said Effie.

  ‘I wondered when I’d get the chance to try it out,’ said Raven. ‘It’s not very impressive, I know – it was all I could afford, even putting two weeks’ allowance together. Apparently it works best if you’re in trouble and it feels sorry for you. I wonder . . .’

  Raven got on the broomstick and it lifted into the air.

  ‘OK,’ she said. ‘I already feel a bit sick, but . . . Let’s go!’

  Both horses heard their witch friend clearly saying vamos, albeit in English, and so they cantered away as fast as they could, following the broomstick through the cold evening until they were back in their stables again, each with a big bag of oats and alfalfa.