The Monster

by Garth Nix

  Jaide followed, suddenly afraid for her brother, although she didn’t know why.

  Custer sniffed him too, then bent and nudged him in the chest, like a giant version of Ari.

  ‘What –?’ Jack’s eyes flickered open. He stared at Custer in confusion, then Jaide. ‘Why are you interrupting me? I thought this was the exercise.’

  ‘It was,’ said Custer. His voice came out deep and resonant from his tiger’s barrel chest. ‘And you have seen your doubts. You know yourself better now, and it’s up to you whether you reveal that knowledge or keep it to yourself. What matters is how you use this knowledge to make yourself stronger.’

  The twins studied each other, wondering what the other had experienced during the meditation. Neither volunteered anything.

  After a short silence, Custer said, ‘All right, time to show me what you have learned already.’

  He bade them sit on either side of him and do as he commanded. They started small: Jaide conjured a breeze barely strong enough to tip over a fallen leaf; Jack made his hand vanish into the tree’s shadow. Slowly the tasks became more complex and the commands more frequent, until the garden was awash with whirling winds and shadows, and the twins no longer had time to think about what, precisely, they were doing. As a result, more and more frequently their attempts to obey Custer went awry.

  ‘Eddy – here! Shade – there!’

  Custer prowled back and forth between them, pointing and snapping orders. They hadn’t noticed him change back into human form. They heard only his voice – and it was a voice that brooked no disagreement. Under the gaze of those odd yellow eyes, they tried their best to do everything he said.

  Inevitably, perhaps, it all went wrong.

  In the middle of calling up a pair of tiny twisters, Jaide felt something inside her snap like a rubber band. The twisters reared up like snakes, coiling round each other and tying themselves into a tight knot. Then they vanished, and nothing Jaide could do would bring them back.

  Jack fared no better. His shadows suddenly took on a life of their own, as though they had become twisters of air, just like his sister could create. He struggled to bring them back under his command, but they danced round him like mad dervishes, straining to be set free.

  Then he too felt an odd breaking sensation inside him. As his Gift dissolved and fell away, he cried out in dismay.

  Jaide was too deep in her own crisis to hear him. She waved her hands, commanded under her breath, did everything she had done before – but nothing she did would bring her Gift back.

  Then, without warning, it all returned, and more. Wind swirled around her, kicking up dust and pine needles – and shadows too, as though she had inherited Jack’s Gift along with hers, in one wild, untamable mix.

  ‘Cease!’ barked Custer.

  Instantly, the mad tangle of shadows and air fell away.

  The twins stared at each other, confused and distraught, awaiting an explanation for what had just happened.

  All Custer said, however, was, ‘It is time for lunch.’

  They went inside, where they found all the ingredients required for sandwiches laid out on the table. Jaide’s appetite was as disturbed as the rest of her. She didn’t immediately dig in like Jack, who felt hungry enough to eat all of it and the table as well. She hung back until Jack had made his usual teetering tower of food, and only decided that she would eat at all because Custer insisted.

  ‘Using your Gift is no different from working any other part of your mind or body,’ he said. ‘It takes energy, and that energy must be restored. Fail to take sustenance, and your Gift will either wither – or it will consume you by degrees, until there is nothing left.’

  The latter thought was so horrible that Jaide forced herself to make a ham and cheese sandwich and eat it all down.

  Custer ate only greens and a tomato, with half a piece of buttered bread. Still he said nothing about what had happened to them in the garden. Jack and Jaide didn’t ask either, until Jack was halfway through his sandwich and able to think about something other than food.

  ‘My Gifts aren’t gone for good, are they?’ he asked.

  ‘Most likely they will return,’ said Custer, not very reassuringly. ‘How long that will take, though, I cannot tell you.’

  ‘I think I have Jack’s Gift as well as mine now,’ Jaide confessed. ‘And I think for a while he had mine. How is that possible? How can our Gifts move like that?’

  ‘You are twins,’ Custer said. ‘You are connected. Furthermore, you are still unsure of who you are. You think you understand your Gifts, but in truth you have barely been introduced to them. They are changeable and fickle. Until you understand yourselves, you cannot understand them.’

  ‘You did this to us,’ said Jack, feeling a flash of sudden resentment. ‘You made us doubt ourselves, and now our Gifts have gone mad.’

  ‘Is this the first time you have felt like this?’ Custer asked them.

  The twins lowered their eyes, remembering the attack of the moths, when their Gifts had seemed to reverse their effects, and the duel with the candles, when they had become weirdly entangled. Their Gifts had been playing up already, and they hadn’t realised what was going on.

  ‘Doubt is one of the many weapons The Evil will use against you,’ said Custer. ‘You can be sure of that. Learn to resist now, or fall later.’

  Jaide’s appetite had gone again, but she forced herself to keep eating. If what Custer said was true, their Gifts might not settle for ages, and she might end up being a Shadow Walker instead of Jack. She didn’t like that thought. Her brief experiences of flying in the embrace of the wind had been so exhilarating, and at the same time so terrifying, that she had never felt quite so alive. She couldn’t imagine never doing it again.

  The thought was too dismaying. She had to change the subject.

  ‘Do you know what an excision is, Custer?’

  Custer frowned again, this time genuinely.

  ‘I recall that it is a bit of . . . leftover Evil,’ he said slowly. ‘A remnant or relict that remains when wards are re-established. Why do you ask?’

  ‘We think there’s one loose in Portland,’ said Jaide eagerly. ‘We have to –’

  ‘Do nothing!’ instructed Custer firmly. ‘Such things are weak and fade of their own accord. They cannot survive without a connection to the greater mass of The Evil.’

  ‘But it wasn’t weak, not last night at the sawmill’ said Jaide. ‘The Evil took over thousands of moths. Thousands!’

  Custer did not answer immediately. He simply looked at them, shifting his gaze from Jaide to Jack and back again, as if he was searching for something that was not immediately obvious.

  ‘Moths have simple minds,’ he said finally. ‘Even a fading excision of The Evil could probably manage a few thousand moths. Nevertheless, I will mention the matter to your grandmother. But you need to keep out of it. Your Gifts are in a perilous state. Control is the most important thing for you to learn now. When you have mastered yourselves and your Gifts, then you can begin the great work ahead of you, and go forth against The Evil.’

  Jack thought of his father with Custer on a brand-new island in the Pacific, fighting sharks and giant birds possessed by The Evil. That did make their fears about Portland and the excision seem very small, even if it didn’t dispel them entirely. It wasn’t just the moths; there was also the strange feeling they’d had of being watched, and the mysterious skin they had found on the building site.

  ‘But what about the giant snake skin or whatever it was we found?’ she asked. ‘It isn’t just moths!’

  ‘I said you should stay out of it,’ instructed Custer firmly. ‘If your assistance is required, I am sure you will be asked for it.’

  Jaide went white and felt tears starting in her eyes. Jack shifted uneasily next to her, wanting to help, but unsure of what he could do.

  Deep inside Jaide, humiliation fought against anger. This was the second time her help had been refused, her good deeds re
jected. First Kleo hissed at her to go away, and now Custer was telling her much the same thing.

  Stupid cats! thought Jaide. Anger had won over the feelings of humiliation and hurt. Big and little! They don’t know when they need help! Well, they’re going to get it anyway.

  ‘If you’ve finished,’ said Custer, indicating their empty plates, ‘I suggest we resume.’

  Without argument, but without much enthusiasm either, the twins followed him back out into the garden.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  All Aboard the Red Rocket!

  Custer worked with them for another two hours, but wasn’t able to return their Gifts to their former state. Jaide had both Jack’s and her own tangled up in an unruly mess, while Jack had nothing. Both found it frustrating, and behind his bluff, impassive manner they sensed Custer felt the same. Of course, he wasn’t the one whose Gifts were in revolt, so they reserved their sympathy entirely for themselves.

  In the course of their travails, they witnessed his transformation from human to sabretooth and back more than once. It was both fascinating and unnerving, the way his teeth and bones stretched, warping his muscles and twisting his skin into new patterns and shapes, and he absorbed his clothes and shoes and everything into his body too, to become tiger hide. It was clearly something that required a great deal of skill and exertion, for Custer was invariably out of breath when he finished each transformation.

  ‘Will we ever learn to do that?’ Jack asked the last time Custer turned back into his human form.

  ‘I don’t know. Your Gifts are in a state of flux and your journey to self-discovery has hardly begun. It is sometimes possible to turn incipient Gifts in a particular direction, given hard work and the right influences.’

  Jack decided to take that as a yes. He would give anything to change into something as powerful as a tiger – a panther, perhaps, or a wolf . . .

  Jaide imagined flying high over the world on the broad wings of an eagle, and wished she didn’t have to wait. Why was everything to do with being a Warden hard? Even when their Gifts were working, nothing went as planned.

  She was so deep in thought that she didn’t notice the miniature vortex that skidded through the shadow of the fir, disappeared behind the trunk, then returned with a ginger tom tangled up in its heart.

  ‘Take it off me!’ Ari yelled. ‘I was just about to come out – honest!’

  Custer clapped his hands together, once, and the vortex collapsed, depositing Ari on the ground.

  ‘Uh, I didn’t mean to do that!’ said Jaide. ‘I mean, I didn’t even know –’

  ‘You didn’t,’ said Custer. ‘I did. You have my apologies, Aristotle. I thought you were . . . another cat.’

  Ari sniffed and licked his paws.

  ‘Apology accepted. I was coming to give you a message. She says it’s time to go, and I am to escort you to the railway station.’

  Custer pulled a gold fob watch from his pocket, flicked the cover open and looked at it.

  ‘Indeed. The time has come for me to conclude my tuition. My thanks, Jack and Jaide, for your hard work today.’

  ‘Wait!’ said Jack in a panic. ‘You can’t leave now. I haven’t got my Gifts back!’

  ‘I sympathise,’ said the Warden, ‘but it’s not for me to return them to you. They will come, or not, in their own time.’

  ‘But – but –’

  Custer put a hand on each of his shoulders and looked deep into his eyes. ‘Troubletwister, know thyself. Only then will you know your enemy.’

  He turned to Jaide, bowed and left on foot as a human, not as a sabretooth, as she had half expected he would.

  That suddenly their lesson was over.

  ‘Do we really have to go to see Tara?’ Jaide asked Ari.

  ‘I was instructed to give you no choice in the matter, but what I should do if you refuse, your grandmother didn’t say. She did tell me that she has packed your bags, and that they’re sitting on your beds, ready to go.’

  They went inside and, sure enough, their backpacks were exactly as Ari described.

  ‘Where is Grandma?’ Jack asked, still stinging from the fact that Custer had left him powerless against the many threats that seemed to be inhabiting Portland at the moment.

  ‘I have no idea.’ Ari hopped on to the bed, circled a particular spot three times and sat down, resting his head on his paws.

  ‘What do you know then?’ asked Jack in exasperation.

  ‘The good news is that the rat-poisonings have stopped.’

  ‘Does that mean Kleo is OK now?’ asked Jaide. ‘She won’t be challenged?’

  Ari tilted his head over, considering.

  ‘No. Although the poisonings have stopped, we lost some good friends and the balance of power has shifted. There are even more cats from outside to worry about now. There’s a rumour of a battle this weekend. If enough outside cats move in, Kleo could be ousted, possibly even run right out of Portland . . .’

  Ari’s ears drooped as he said this. Jaide sat next to him and scritched him under the collar.

  ‘Do you know where they’re coming from? If we could head them off somehow, maybe –’

  Ari butted his head up against her hand, slid between her arm and body and jumped to the floor, where he paced back and forth angrily.

  ‘Don’t even think it! If Kleo knew I’d told you this much, she’d have kittens with cod tails. Now, if you’re ready, put on your charms and let’s get moving.’

  ‘Our what?’

  ‘Charms,’ said Ari, pointing with his pink nose. ‘On your bags. Your tickets are there too.’

  Jaide picked up an antique locket from the top of her bag. It was a plain silver disc you could open with a thumbnail and had a pale green ribbon to hang it around her throat. When she opened the locket, all it contained was some dry leaves, seeds and grit.

  Jack found a similarly ancient pillbox on his bag. Its contents were the same.

  ‘You’re to wear these charms or carry them with you at all times,’ said Ari. ‘They’ll help hide you from The Evil should it come looking for you.’

  ‘But how could it do that?’ asked Jaide. ‘We’re protected by the . . . oh, right.’

  For the first time, it occurred to her that they would be leaving Portland, and therefore leaving the protection of the wards behind.

  ‘Is this safe?’ asked Jack. ‘I mean, is it really all right for us to go?’

  ‘I guess it must be,’ she said, ‘or Grandma would never let us.’

  ‘You know, if you think about it, we should be safer outside Portland because this is where The Evil comes through. If the wards don’t work, I mean.’

  ‘It’s only one of the places,’ replied Jaide. ‘I wonder where the next nearest one is? And if The Evil came through there, how far could it go? I mean, could it travel all the way here?’

  Ari opened his mouth, but before he could say a word, Jaide continued.

  ‘I know you don’t know, Ari. I was just wondering. More things to ask Grandma.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Ari. ‘And now we really must go or you’ll miss the train, and then I’ll be in trouble too.’

  ‘All right,’ said Jack, resigning himself to leaving the safety of Grandma X’s house and, perhaps even more horrifyingly, to having a sleepover with a pair of girls. ‘Are we supposed to walk there?’

  ‘Take your bikes,’ Ari said. ‘You can leave them up at the station. No one would dare steal them – or if they did, they’d never do it a second time.’

  They shut the door behind them without bothering to turn the lock, following Grandma X’s example. Ari hopped into the basket on Jaide’s bike and braced himself for sudden acceleration.

  The route to the station took them right past the old sawmill and the construction site. They saw no signs of moths or of anything to do with The Evil. The hole in the fence had been securely sealed. As they zoomed past, however, Jaide saw something that she hadn’t noticed before, partly because it had been shrouded in the g
loom, but also because she hadn’t thought to look.

  Along the southern edge of the building site, just over the fence, was a narrow creek bed, the sides of which had been concreted over so it was more like a drain. Its eastern end vanished under the road and the businesses that ran along the seaward side of the street. The western end opened into a large pipe that led into the rising hillside that hid the railway line from the street, the hillside that to the south became Little Rock.

  Jaide slowed as she went past, then put on the brakes, hard.

  ‘Hey!’ said Jack, almost crashing into her from behind. ‘What’re you doing?’

  ‘We can’t stop,’ said Ari. ‘The train is due to leave in five minutes!’

  ‘Hold on,’ she said, dismounting and giving the handlebars to Jack so the bike wouldn’t tip over. ‘I just want to check something.’

  She ran off the road and down to the side of the creek bed. A thin trickle of clear water ran along the green-scummed bottom. There was surprisingly little of the junk she had seen built up in similar drains in the city. Maybe, she thought, it had all been swept clean by the floods of the previous week.

  Maybe something more than rubbish had been swept out too . . .

  She hopped down the sloping concrete wall, being very careful where she put her hands and feet, and making certain that she would be able to get out again afterwards. The mouth leading into the hillside would once have seemed impenetrably dark to her eyes, but now she had Jack’s gift as well as her own, she could see quite clearly the way the concrete walls gave way to natural stone, as though the drain connected to a series of caves that went much deeper underground.

  She stepped right up to the opening and put her head into the shadow.

  If she was a monster and needed somewhere to hide, she thought, this would be the perfect place. It didn’t matter how dark or dank it was. She had seen seaweed turn into a giant sea monster and climb out of the ocean with her very own eyes. If The Evil could do that, a little damp wasn’t going to be a problem.

  Was there something lurking inside now, in the depths of the tunnel . . . something black and inhuman hanging from the ceiling . . . perhaps something monstrous?