Gregory Grey and the Fugitive in Helika

by Stanzin

CHAPTER 9

  Gratitude and Ghosts

  ‘I’m going to look like a complete idiot.’

  It was Sunday.

  Gregory, Zach, Mango and Johanna were in Gregory’s bedroom. Gregory’s guests would arrive any minute; news of his waking had spread like wildfire. Uncle Quincy had made Gregory stay indoors and rest all of Saturday, saying he’d need strength to make it through the reception.

  The only reason he was putting up with it at all was because Uncle Quincy had promised that Gregory would get to meet some of his parent’s acquaintances and friends. He’d refused to wear anything sparkly, so they’d gotten him into fine, steel-grey robes.

  ‘No idiot will have ever looked finer,’ Zach said solemnly. ‘Besides, there’s an upside: if you do a bad enough job, maybe they’ll never ask you to do this again... hey, that’s not a half bad idea – tank this! – as badly as you can!’

  ‘It’s really over before it’s even begun,’ Mango soothed. ‘No one will really ask you too many questions, and the newspapers will take up most of your time anyway.’

  ‘Newspapers,’ Gregory muttered, ‘Reggie, Alf and Mixer will never, ever let me live it down.’

  ‘You’ll be fine,’ Johanna added, ‘They’ll probably be too excited to meet you to notice if you’re messing up.’

  Gregory blinked.

  ‘That actually helps,’ he said in surprise.

  ‘Greg, it’s time,’ Uncle Quincy said, poking his head in through the door.

  Gregory took a deep breath and followed his Uncle out of his room and up a narrow staircase; it opened into the clear blue sky.

  It took Gregory a moment to realise that the sudden noise in the air was applause – and then they descended on him in a rush of extended hands, bright colours, and thankfulness, all breathing his air.

  ‘Alaric Primrose, Mr. Grey, and my sons, Ludo and Lawrence, who you’ve met-’

  ‘You wonderful, wonderful boy! I’m Koyuki Amagi, my daughter couldn’t be here today but she sent this card…’

  Though Uncle Quincy kept the stampede semi-organised, they still flowed around him, constricting and confining. Faces popped up in front of him, holding his eyes for desperate seconds, most welling with tears, and then were pushed aside, vanishing into a cacophony of mutters.

  ‘Terrible, terrible day – I only wish that someone had been there for my husband, as you were there for my son, Yuri –’

  ‘It was no big deal really,’ he tried to tell them, ‘It was my own skin too, what’d you have done? I got lucky that’s all.’

  He said it to everyone who shook his hand, or grabbed him into a hug, or cried into his shoulder, and he wasn’t sure they heard him. His litany drowned in their grief, and their utterly selfish gratitude. They were here to speak, to thank; they had no ears for someone who claimed their Hero, their miracle, was a fluke – wasn’t real.

  ‘Sarthak Sharma, my boy, and if you know what’s good for you, you’ll accept Priya’s, that’s my lovely wife, invitation to lunch – haha –’

  ‘Such a brave young man –’

  ‘So little – only a child – how on Earth…’

  ‘It’s only natural that she fell in love with her saviour – no need to hide behind me, Raeesa darling – say hi to Gregory – he won’t bite.’

  ‘Wear this pendant always, young Seraph – a centuries old family heirloom – call if you ever have need of us and we’ll be there.’

  ‘No thanks can ever be enough, sir – we are your vassals forevermore.’

  Gregory moved through the blur of people, shifting from one wall of people to the next, his right arm and hand fixedly extended, constantly shaken. Earlier, Uncle Quincy had given him a few quick pointers on etiquette – (‘Shake their hands firmly, hear their thanks – if anyone carries on too long, interrupt them with a few words on how it was your pleasure to be of service and move on – accept any gifts with thanks and under no circumstances are you to accept any oaths of fealty or other such nonsense, turn them down politely but firmly – say something on the lines of ‘it’s too great an honour’ – they’ll be satisfied with that – do the same if anyone offers you their daughters in marriage, which is unlikely but you never know.’)

  Many of his guests carried a thick and grey book in their hands, and they had Gregory sign it. Bewildered, but unquestioning, he did so.

  Terrified and mortified, he proceeded through the many introductions with ceremonial rigidity. After a while, he fell into a rhythm of greeting, allowing his mouth and mind to automatically sidestep the scarier declarations of gratitude. He was managing one parent a minute, which meant that he’d be done in about another thirty minutes, after which he had a brief speech, and an interview. It was bad, but not unbearably so.

  There was an end to this, Gregory realised with some relief. He wasn’t sure if his grip was still firm; his hand had gone numb a while ago.

  He turned to the next Sparkler.

  ‘… a zeppelin? Why, of course you can have one, or even two if you like – quite serviceable – we’ll even provide the pilot, the food – what’s that you say? Payment? The very idea! – no sir, not a chance, it’s all on us y’know!’

  The short, deeply kowtowing man straightened, and it was a moment before Gregory realised it wasn’t a man at all, but Zachary Zeppelin twinkling at him.

  ‘I think someone wants to give you another pendant – ooh, looked like an engagement knot – how many is that now?’

  ‘Eight, I think. Unlikely my left toe,’ muttered Gregory.

  ‘That many? Are they even close to your age?’

  ‘There may have been some older sisters…’

  ‘You dirty little…’

  ‘Begone, you!’

  But Mango had been right – in no time at all he was hastened to a podium in front of the crowd, with Johanna on one side (looking very pretty in a dress with animes of large, blooming hibiscus) and Uncle Quincy on the other (in his ceremonial royal blue and gold uniform, looking quite intimidating). Mango stood just behind him; she had words to say too.

  Uncle Quincy introduced him:

  ‘Seven years ago, my sister and her family vanished, and though we all looked for her, we looked in vain. Twelve days ago, on the darkest day this world has known, their youngest son returned to us…’

  Gregory quite forgot to listen; he had just looked south, and his breath caught in his throat.

  Johanna had brought him up here yesterday, when he had complained of boredom; the view had taken his breath away then too: to the north and beyond lay a bright green valley, where the Spire reached for the sky, but he was higher than it’s highest point; to the west and he saw the two small towns he had seen from the balcony of the Apple, and the incredibly beautiful, misty valley in which they lay; and to the south-east, he had seen the Eyrie, the triangle-shaped township of Domremy’s richest and most important; and beyond, a plain of meadows and woods that sloped gently down.

  Directly south he had seen nothing; a huge cloudbank had entirely obscured his view of what lay there – but the weather was clear today.

  The three mountains could not have been more than ten kilometres away, and ten kilometres wide from east to west; together, they formed a forbidding snow-dusted massif that cut off the sky from the earth; the mountain closest to him looked downright scary, a cruel-looking wall so steep that no snow rested on its flanks.

  ‘That’s Murder,’ Johanna muttered, pointing at the closest mountain, ‘To its west is Monk, and west of that is Virgin – together they make the Shield.’

  ‘They’re huge,’ said Gregory, awed.

  ‘Helika is right behind them,’ Mango said, and there was distaste in her voice.

  ‘You don’t like Helika?’

  ‘No one likes Helika.’

  Though Mango was whispering, she managed to hiss.

  The breezy Wing encompassed the Eyrie to the west and the north; the west ramparts stretched south to another, much closer peak. Cut into that peak wa
s the Hanging Palace of Occilox, a curious collection of slender towers with shared bridges that soared high above the ground. A great orange flag flew at half-mast from the highest tower.

  Gregory started – Uncle Quincy had touched his shoulder – it was his turn to speak. Flushing, he stepped up to the podium, where the speech Uncle Quincy had written lay. He read it without hearing it, and when the applause came at the end, he barely heard that; the speech had been very populist – it wasn’t him.

  The worst was over; his guests streamed away with final handshakes. The open landing, now empty, looked a lot larger. Massive platters and trays of food had been heartily demolished, but Zach and Mango had managed to sneak a goodly amount of desserts away from the horde.

  Uncle Quincy brought up ten plush beanbags, and a small folding table for the desserts. The party settled into a cosy circle: Gregory, Mango, Zach, Uncle Quincy, and six grown ups who had been friends of Vincent and Veracity Grey. They tucked into butterscotch pudding.

  ‘Cheers,’ Zach said, sipping at his wine. They all had a glass – even Johanna had a tiny cupful.

  ‘Cheers!’

  ‘You’re exactly half and half of your mum and dad,’ said a vast and dark old man named Dambisa Moyo. ‘Never would have figured the two of them would have got together.’

  ‘Why not?’ Gregory asked.

  ‘Your dad never gave your mum the time of the day, did he?’ the man laughed. ‘The poor girl, I remember how furious and miserable she’d get.’

  ‘He didn’t like her?’

  ‘I wouldn’t put it like that,’ said dark-haired Prachi Gupta. ‘Your dad, he was a rather… driven person, you might say. It’s like he didn’t see her, or at least, didn’t see her anymore than he saw others.’

  ‘Mad your dad was, even if he didn’t cackle. It was a quiet sort of mad,’ the tall and balding Phillip Kudryavstev said affectionately.

  ‘He wasn’t mad. He was just too involved in his own things,’ Prachi said.

  ‘He was mad alright, at least when he was pretending to be,’ the pale Mikko Hyponnen insisted. ‘Ever see one of his stand ups?’

  ‘Stand ups?’ Gregory asked

  ‘Comedy routines,’ said the short and stout Corby Griesenbeck. ‘Put him on a stage, and your dad was funnier than… than… than a cat that’s had it’s ball of string stolen by a puppy. He’d have the whole place in fits for hours. Off it though, you’d hardly ever notice him – tall though he was.’

  ‘Yeah, that happened a lot,’ said the last of Gregory’s parent’s friends here, a demure man named Andrew Heidemann. ‘He’d enter a room and you’d never see him coming in – and then he’d have something to say –and suddenly, he was all you could see.’

  ‘You know how there are people who fade into the background?’ Prachi said. ‘Your dad faded into the foreground, and then he stayed there. When he was on stage, I could hardly look anywhere else.’

  ‘And that’s not the only time he took to stage. Do you remember his duel with that American fellow – Jeremiah Alfreth his name was, I think.’

  ‘Ooooooo, yes! How could I ever forget! Crazy, crazy fight.’

  The whole room tittered in dreamy recollection; Gregory was grinning too. ‘He got into a fight?’

  ‘No, a duel,’ Dambisa boomed. ‘A formal one – an exhibition match with one of the students from another Gurukul that’d come over as part of an exchange programme.’

  ‘Jerry-boy – that was what we all began calling him after – because he’d call everybody his ‘boy’ – Jerry-boy had been winning some tournaments in his own circuit… and no doubt he was good – but he had a way about him that just ticked people off!’

  ‘And the looks he’d give you – ugh,’ Prachi snorted in disgust.

  ‘Anyway, he’d let victory inflate his head a bit,’ said Phillip, eager to be part of the telling, ‘and wanted to prove his mettle against the best the Caverns had to offer – and he’d heard about your dad. He challenged – your dad refused, very politely and everything, mind you.’

  ‘And then he put his toe over the line,’ Andrew said, smiling a little.

  ‘Aye, he goes to one of your dad’s shows, and starts heckling him – and that’s okay really – hecklers can be fun… not him though – he was as annoying as hecklers ever get. But then he said something to the effect of your dad being too scared to get into a ring with him.’

  ‘I still remember how the whole room just hushed up – still gives me goosebumps,’ Dambisa said, ‘And the cocky little puffin didn’t get why – and your dad smiles, bows and accepts the challenge right there on the stage. And well-’

  ‘Your dad swept the floor with him, then went on to sandpaper and polish it,’ Mikko said with vicious relish.

  ‘Till it shone!’ Prachi said, an equally wicked look on her face.

  Chuckles burst out all over the room, and Gregory felt something warm swell in his chest, a feeling that carried on when the conversation turned to his mother.

  ‘Mad,’ said Mikko at once, ‘but not like your dad. Not at all like your dad.’

  Dambisa looked thoughtful. ‘Veracity Lake… let me put it this way – she was sharp, but like a whip, not a knife. Brilliant, maybe even more so than your father – not that it helped her any.’

  ‘Why not?’ Gregory asked.

  ‘She was completely erratic,’ Prachi said, ‘couldn’t keep her mind fixed on anything for long – always jumping from one thing to another.’

  ‘– runecraft one week, Shamanate history the next, then alchemy, back to history but with a focus on Persian nomads –’ Corby said.

  ‘The only things she did with any sort of regularity were her garden, stargazing and the piano,’ Andrew said.

  ‘She played the piano?’ Gregory asked.

  Dambisa sighed. ‘Like a maestro.’

  Gregory suddenly wished he’d tried more than banging a few keys on the Director’s clunky old keyboard.

  ‘– completely spoiled, of course –’ Prachi was saying.

  ‘– she wasn’t that bad –’ Phillip defended.

  ‘Yeah, right!’ Mikko said. ‘Listen, she had the devil’s own temper, and her tongue could cut stone to ribbons! Absolutely ruthless! If she set her sights on somebody, everyone sensible ran for the hills and everyone else would sit down for the show… behind solid shield spells, of course.’

  ‘Now you’re just exaggerating – don’t listen, Greg,’ began Phillip.

  ‘Not all of us wear rose-tinted glasses, Phil,’ Mikko said. ‘I’ll be the first to say she was as gracious and courteous as you could ask anyone to be… in the right mood. But when she wanted something, it was to be hers and she'd move everything to get it, and you know it.’

  ‘Good thing too,’ giggled Corby, who’d been going heavy on the wine. He pointed at Gregory, saying, ‘Or you’d have never come along.’

  ‘Yeah – you said dad didn’t like… I mean, didn’t see her?’ Gregory pressed.

  ‘Not for all the while she tried to catch him,’ Andrew said. ‘She'd coupled up before, of course, the pretty girl. Guys would flock to her – all she had to do was crook a finger. Not your dad though. It was a couple of performances after the duel – she gushed about his performance – he thanked her and then he left. I don't think I’ve ever seen her so confused, like her world had hiccupped.’

  ‘He became another project of hers,’ Corby said. ‘Another obsession, and we thought she’d get over it… but no. She pursued him with a single mindedness that you’d never seen in her before – not that it worked – at the time anyway.’

  ‘It wasn't as if she was stalking him or anything, of course,’ Phillip began again.

  Andrew scoffed.

  ‘She was totally stalking him,’ he said.

  ‘Shut it you!’

  ‘Same classes. Same assignments, there at every after school show – sure she wasn’t stalking him,’ Andrew said, ticking off his fingers

  ‘Their interests mat
ched!’

  ‘If you say so.’

  ‘They got together, didn’t they?’ Phillip said heatedly.

  ‘Not the way she planned it.’

  ‘What was it?’ Gregory interrupted.

  ‘Your mum was working on a thesis for her final year and your dad heard about it,’ Mikko said. ‘She was heavily into magical inheritance via cultural transmission, massive geek that she was. Always complained that no one paid enough attention to the affect gypsies had on it. Combed through what she could of world folklore… I don’t remember much about it, but I think it was smack dab in your dad's area of expertise – so he lectured her. They argued of sixteen hours straight if I remember right – and at the end of it, he asked her out - and like you said, the world hiccupped again.’

  Gregory listened spellbound as each of his guests narrated their stories of his parents, drifting back and forth between uproarious laughter and melancholy anecdotes. They’d been drinking for a while now, and eventually a few wet eyes spilled their tears down noses and into wine glasses.

  ‘The besht people ever – your mum and dad. Loyal, y’know? That mattersh. You be loyal too, y’hear?’ Corby said, wagging a fat finger at Gregory.

  ‘Anyone talksh shmack aboot them, you let ush know,’ Phillip said. ‘We’re friendsh and we’ll tich them a lesshin in mannersh. And you – you’sh like our own kid… our own babe, y’know?’

  ‘Aye, cute baby you were,’ Prachi said. ‘And so grown up now, so handsome.’

  ‘Like his dad!’ Dambisa bellowed.

  ‘I thought you ought to have been a girl,’ Mikko said, frowning, and a little cross-eyed.

  ‘Huhuhu.’

  ‘Heehee.’

  Gregory bore all of it with dignity, even as Zach and Pepper snickered. When his parent’s friends finally left, and Uncle Quincy had flown off to office, they went back to Gregory’s room, and to the mountain of presents on his bed. Gregory sank beside the mountain; he was exhausted, and exhilarated.

  ‘Still with us then?’ Zach teased. ‘Head not exploded from all that hot air you inhaled a while ago? Could’ve sworn it was enough to float the Scheherezade.’

  ‘Shut it, you! Let him relax,’ Mango said.

  ‘I think that Prachi woman might have had a thing for your dad,’ Zach said.

  Mango nodded ‘Yeah, and Phillip for your mum.’

  ‘If you’re trying to make me barf, it’s almost working,’ Gregory said, yawning.

  Zach skipped over to the bed and jumped onto it with both feet. ‘You know what you need? To relax! Nothing more relaxing than a pile of gifts waiting to be unwrapped. Get ripping!’

  Gregory was fourteen – no amount of exhaustion was going to keep him from presents. So they pulled out the contents of Gregory’s trunk out to join the pile on his bed.

  The first package yielded a plain cloak.

  ‘You look disappointed,’ Zach observed.

  ‘What? No…well, I though these things were going to be kind of…’

  ‘Ostentatious?’ Mango suggested.

  ‘Well, yeah. This is actually kind of nice. Funny though – it feels warm on one side, cool on the other,’ Gregory said, running it through his fingers. It was light and soft.

  ‘Ooh, switcher cloak. Excellent camping gear, keeps you toasty when it’s cold and chilled out when it’s hot. Comfortable in all weathers, see?’ Zach said.

  ‘Neat,’ Gregory said, reluctantly appreciative.

  ‘I bet they’re all enchanted,’ Mango said, just as eager.

  ‘Don’t stop now,’ Zach said, tossing him another one.

  The gifts piled up on the couch; the wrapping paper piled on the floor. There were many gifts, but some were a lot more impressive than the others.

  There was a self-tightening belt that folded, lengthened or hardened on Gregory’s intuitive command; a pair of gloves that protected his hands but restricted no sensation, even in his fingers; a pair of boots that lengthened impact time, allowing for falls from greater heights; a hat that tilted against the sun; glare-adaptive goggles; a silver and emerald brooch charmed to repel insects; an icemaker; a very curious, small, and rectangular device of uncertain function; a knife; a bronze amulet that could be affixed into any entrance to seal it so long it had some source of magical energy to draw upon; a poison-detecting chalice; a tome of duelling spells; a tome on non-magical combat; a tome on wilderness survival; an advanced first aid kit; a self-focusing spyglass; and a map that showed the area in his immediate ten metre radius in incredible detail.

  Zach picked up the spyglass, tracing what looked like a small crest. ‘Family heirlooms, the lot of them. Are you sure they want a hero? This looks like assassin gear.’

  Gregory picked up his gifts with some awe. Any one of these would be worth a fortune, certainly worth a lot more than any trinket he could have stolen from any gypsies. He picked up the brooch. ‘I could wear this all the time and never worry about bed bugs or mosquitoes again.’

  Zach blanched. ‘Bed bugs? Ugh. I don’t want to know.’

  ‘Once, we had to burn every mattress and pillow in our orphanage. Those things got in everywhere, even hair, and…’

  ‘I don’t want to know!’

  ‘You alright, Greg?’ Mango asked.

  ‘I’m shiny,’ Gregory said, perhaps a little too quickly.

  ‘Still, cool stuff, your parents,’ Zach said.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Gregory, then, on an impulse: ‘But that thesis my mum and dad were working on, it wasn’t mum’s alone – they submitted it together.’

  ‘Eh? How’d you reckon that?’ Zach asked.

  ‘I’ll tell you, but you can’t tell anyone else,’ Gregory said, and then added to Johanna, ‘And you either.’

  They swore to keep his secret at once, so he told them of his talk with Rathborne, his fear that the Cavern and it’s contents might be destroyed, and deciding to get his parent’s records out of there.

  ‘For all I knew, magic was gone forever,’ Gregory said. ‘I wasn’t going to let anyone burn the only things that could tell me about my mother and father.’

  ‘Fine, but I still haven’t forgiven you for being so stupid,’ Mango said frowning. Gregory unconsciously touched his right shoulder; today morning was the first time he had seen Mango since the Voidmark, and the first thing she had done upon their meeting was punch his shoulder with all the strength she had. The second thing she’d done was tell him in no uncertain terms that regardless of what anyone said, she was not coupling up with him.

  Gregory successfully contained his complete lack of disappointment.

  It turned out that the figure that had sprinted past Gregory right after the scream had been Mango’s aunt. She had rallied the other professors back into the corridor, by which point the great spectre had vanished, and all they had found was a heavily bleeding Gregory.

  ‘They did their first aid thing,’ Mango said, ‘but you didn’t look so bad… or at least, not as bad as you’d expect someone who’d just been stabbed through the chest to look… but you wouldn’t wake up either.

  ‘We didn’t even know magic was back until your Uncle came flying over the cliff with this whole team of Healers… and then we heard how bad the quake had been, and the news got worse day after day.’

  ‘Were… are your mum and dad alright?’ Gregory asked cautiously.

  Mango nodded, but said sadly, ‘I lost a couple of cousins though. We weren’t close or anything, but…’

  She trailed off, and looked down into her lap.

  ‘Almost everyone’s lost somebody,’ she said quietly. ‘I went down to Coffer Street a few days ago, just to get away from home – my aunts and uncles were mourning with us – and this old woman came up to me… she thought I was her granddaughter at first… started to cry all over me – I let her.’

  There was a moment where no one knew quite what to say anymore; Johanna dropped her eyes to the book in her lap (she always had a book).

  ‘Do you read a lot?’ Za
ch asked her.

  Without taking her eyes off the page, Johanna said, ‘It’s the only thing there to do when Dad isn’t here. I don’t have school for another year, so…’

  ‘Me too,’ Gregory said.

  Johanna looked sceptical. ‘You’re a boy,’ she said. ‘Boy’s don’t read.’

  Gregory merely grinned.

  Johanna dragged them off to what she called her Den. It did resemble a den; a low, curved ceiling, walls entirely covered in bookshelves (most of which were empty), and a bed beside a window with a wide ledge to sit on.

  ‘Dad said that I could buy up and read all the books that I want. I keep the books I’ve finished reading on the wall,’ she said solemnly. Gregory sensed she was proud of her small collection, which was limited to illustrated books for children, folklore and Shamanate anecdotes. They were large and colorful and filled six of her fifty shelves.

  ‘You’ve read all of these?’ Gregory asked.

  Johanna nodded, trying not to look too proud. ‘Have you?’

  Gregory nodded. ‘You need more. What happens when you run out?’

  ‘I go to the Wormhole,’ Johanna said.

  ‘The what?’

  Five minutes later, the party was out and on its way. The Eyrie was an impossible looking latticework of flowery and shady pathways, houses stacked on each other, and stairs with landings that served as public paths and private landings at once. Bright blooms beamed out of unexpected corners.

  Johanna led them through the maze to a clearing with a massive earthen dome.

  ‘The Wormhole,’ she announced, looking eagerly at Gregory.

  When they stepped inside, Gregory decided he’d found heaven. A vast tunnel crammed with books on all sides receded into the distance, all of it lit up by a uniform golden glow. He followed Johanna in looking all around with almost painful hunger. How was he ever going to finish reading these, even if he read for the rest of his life?

  He walked slowly, taking in the titles… Peril and Prose at Khyber Pass… the Secret of the Auroras… Swimming with Sharks at Sipadan… The Hot Springs of Gaia… tens of thousands more.

  ‘Does this place only have books on geography?’ he asked Johanna a little disappointedly.

  ‘What? No, silly, that’s just the Geography section,’ Johanna told him a second before they stepped into a massive hall.

  Gregory stared and stared and stared. He felt like crying. Books. Books everywhere. Books on tables, books on chairs and books on shelves. Books stuffed into little hollows in the walls. Books dangerously close to a fire. Books wrapped in beautiful leather and brand new, or with peeling, faded fronts. Books on ladders leading up to tunnels dug high into the walls, which had more books.

  ‘Hallo again, Jo,’ said a kindly voice.

  Gregory turned and fell in love all over again. Hair in a bun with curly ringlets falling down the sides of the face, check. Nerdy spectacles, check. Curvy and devastatingly pretty, check.

  ‘Reese, hello,’ said Johanna. ‘Assistant-librarian, my cousin Gregory. Gregory, the assistant-librarian Reese Frelinger.’

  ‘Gregory… oh my goodness, you’re the Hero. What you did was the bravest thing ever,’ Reese gushed, stars in her eyes.

  Gregory decided that being a Hero had its perks.

  ‘E-heh-heh,’ he managed to say.

  ‘Sorry darling, what was that?’

  Gregory decided some actual words might help him out. ‘It was pretty crazy, yeah. I can tell you about it if you like.’

  ‘Oh, you absolutely must!’

  The next thirty minutes passed quickly, at least for Gregory and Zach, who had also taken a fancy to the pretty librarian. The boys barely noticed Mango and Johanna’s annoyance. Gregory and Reese kept their eyes on each other, though she would look at Zach when he jumped in with a comment or described his wrestle with the spectre in the pond. Occasionally, she would touch Gregory’s hand or arm and it took everything he had to go on speaking and not lose his thoughts in the bewitching flow of her expressions.

  ‘… I can remember it clear as anything, though I can’t remember the pain… that claw, sliding in like the sharpest knife ever… and it felt cold, really cold…and that’s the last thing I remember.’

  ‘Can I see?’ Reese asked, and Gregory let her pull back his tunic to bare that cruel looking scar, his breath hitching as she traced it with her finger.

  ‘It looks horrible,’ Reese whispered to Gregory, and neither of the two noticed Johanna’s thin lips. ‘Have you decided on your boons yet?’

  Gregory shook his head.

  Johanna had had enough. Smiling sweetly, she pulled Mango to stand in front of Reese too.

  ‘Gregory’s girlfriend was there too, you know?’ she said. ‘She’s also getting knighted.’

  ‘We’re not coupled up,’ Gregory and Mango said together.

  ‘You kissed!’

  ‘Did not!’

  Mango looked struck by thought.

  ‘What?’ Gregory asked her.

  ‘I just realised – you could probably find out more things about your parents here,’ she said.

  ‘What? How?’

  ‘The Wormhole is Domremy’s official archive,’ she said excitedly. ‘I think they’ve got records of every paper published within Domremy’s borders… and there must be papers that tell how your parents disappeared. They newspapers keep saying it was a big deal, don’t they?’

  Gregory turned to Reese, just as excited. ‘Do you think I could have a look at them?’

  ‘Of course,’ Reese said at once, ‘I’ve actually kept them aside – you’re not the first person this week to come asking for them.’

  A little later, Gregory exited the library as a newly minted Worm of the Wormhole, a stack of newspapers tucked under his arm. Johanna insisted that he wear his membership badge, a blue-bronze trinket.

  ‘That shows you belong, see?’ she said, her tone not allowing any argument.

  That night, when Mango and Zach had left, and Johanna was buried in her book on his armchair, Gregory dove into the papers Reese had picked out for him, and for several hours, there wasn’t a single sound but the rustling of pages.

  The story of the disappearance of the Grey family begins eight years ago, on the eight of June, when a small paper reports an ‘incident of civil disturbance’ in a small town in Slavia, close to the western border of Tsarzemlya, or The Tzarlands. The disturbance took place on the fourth of June. The Grey family are believed to be in the region, having travelled with the Gremlin Tribe for two months leading up to the date of the incident. It is speculated that the storytelling duo may adopt the incident into one of their rare original story attempts.

  Three months pass before Alicia Lake Appleby sends a letter of inquiry to the Domremin Embassy in Slavia, asking for a report on the whereabouts of the Greys; Alicia’s sister has not responded to any of her recent letters.

  Three weeks later, a consternated and apologetic reply from the Domremin Embassy informs Alicia Lake Appleby that her sister’s family is untraceable. Officials are despatched to the Gremlin tribe, which had long progressed into Tsarzemlya, and they are told that the Grey family parted from the tribe a mere two days before the civil disturbance; they shared no reason or purpose for this parting – indeed, the gypsies had been under the impression that the Greys would continue to travel with them until November that year.

  An innkeeper’s records corroborate this; the Greys checked in on the second of June. As was their custom, they paid for their daily lodging on the morning of the fourth, and went out sometime around noon, five hours before the civil disturbance. The Greys are not seen again by any soul in the town. Their luggage is left behind in their room.

  Alicia and Quincy Appleby commission the initial search for the Greys. Notices with portraits were put out in every major newspaper in Slavia and nearby regions. There was, however, no known portrait of young Gregory Grey, so a description was provided instead. Alicia Appleby personally goes and i
nterviews everyone who last saw the Greys. This turns up only one extra detail: a Kamille Rothskin claims she saw a highly excited Veracity Grey storm through the lobby of the inn less than an hour before the Greys left for the last time.

  Subsequent investigation fails to turn up more leads. Six months later, the Greys are pronounced ‘missing, presumed dead’, though the Applebys declare a reward for any substantial information that might lead to their whereabouts.

  Through out all this, the disappearance of the Greys plays only at the edges of public attention. Though well-regarded storytellers, they are not yet the household names they would become – that happens four months later, when rumours abound that the missing family is back, and about to publish a new volume of folktales. There is slump in interesting news that month, and a couple of talented junior writers (and self-confessed Grey fans) employed by The Seraphic play up the mystery of the vanished family.

  On the 4th of June, the anniversary of the Grey family’s last sighting, to crowd of over fifteen hundred, the Wormhole unveils the publishers – Alicia and Quincy Appleby. Alicia Appleby makes a moving and heartfelt speech about the incredible contribution the Greys made to Domremin culture and speaks of characters of the Greys themselves. Quincy Appleby speaks about the book being published – it is the work of the Greys, anecdotes and notes taken from their unpublished manuscripts; greatly annotated, unedited and very raw; full of introductory and explanatory passages; but with their unmissable narrative flair and structure.

  The volume is called The Grey Unwritten, and it reveals a great surprise: a series of short but charming original stories called Leisl and Oddy, which follow the adventures of a young girl and her stuffed rabbit; in which the girl, sorry for the rabbit’s inanimate state, allows it’s soul to occasionally inhabit her own body; this develops into a series of adventures where the cunning rabbit must save the day from the disasters that the intrepid girl inevitably leads them into. The volume credits these stories to six-year-old Gregory Grey.

  The Grey Unwritten captures public imagination like few things ever have. The intimate insight it offers into the minds of the vanished family rouses the people into a renewed search for them. The Throne itself takes an interest. The book is printed in great numbers and distributed far and wide. At the back of each copy is a comprehensive timeline of the Grey family’s activities and detailed transcripts of interviews with the people who met them on their last journey. Tips and clues begin pouring in from a great number of sources, and most are insubstantial.

  A few new details crop up unexpectedly, and they are seemingly alarming. It is reported that Veracity Grey was seen reading an ancient treatise on inheritance, which, though not banned, is widely considered as preparatory reading for necromantics. Vincent Grey was seen frequently associating with the criminal class, purportedly because they were descended from gypsies of old. They were also seen in friendly conversation with an ambassador of the Red Shamans, a group known for its secularly divisive politics and suspected of covert violence against Reflectives.

  The Appleby family, with the Throne’s backing, is quick to respond to these findings: the Greys had forever associated with undesirables in their travels in their quest to preserve the authenticity of their research, which also explains Veracity Grey’s reading choices – there is widespread evidence that much of ancient folklore is based on even older treatises of blood magic and necromancy. Their incredible charm and public humility was well known; their willingness to mingle without concern for faith or class or race had endeared them greatly to the general public.

  But with no further news, public interest wanes. The mystery of the Greys enters popular legend, and efforts to uncover their whereabouts die away.

  Then, six years later, Gregory Grey turns up out of nowhere, and with Mango Piper, saves nearly fifty children from the demons of the Voidmark.

  Gregory put the last of the newspapers down, a little dazed. Johanna looked up.

  ‘Find anything interesting?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ve written a book?’