‘A story Alice couldn’t finish,’ I said. ‘You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?’
His face had gone as grey as his beard. ‘Are you telling me the truth?’
‘We can prove it,’ I said. ‘Please. We don’t have much time and we need your help. Alice is this way.’
He stepped aboard shakily and followed Gypsy down the steps. She led him to Alice’s side. He stared at her, wide-eyed, then looked back at Gypsy. He opened his mouth, then shook his head and closed it again without saying a word. Finally, he turned back to Alice. I waited for him to touch her, to talk to her, to anything . . . but he was paralysed with shock.
‘Help her,’ I pleaded. ‘She said you’d know what to do!’
He rubbed his chin with one hand, unable to take his eyes off her. They were stormy, troubled.
He knelt, taking her hand. ‘Alice? It’s me, your . . .’ He broke off. ‘It’s Ramone.’ He looked up at me. ‘What is this, a fever? How long has she been like this? Where’s your mother?’
‘Away, working,’ I said, in a small voice. ‘Alice was supposed to be looking after me, but she was having trouble with this . . . this story. She said she was stuck. Then she went missing and these people kept showing up. When I saw Gypsy, I thought she was Alice at first, like you did. It was only when I found Alice’s notebook that I realised the truth about the story.’ I hardly paused for breath.
‘But why isn’t she waking?’ Ramone shook Alice’s arm.
‘You mean y-you don’t know?’ I stammered. ‘But that’s why we came looking for you. We thought you’d know how to break the curse!’
He laughed, but it was a choked, angry bark of a noise. ‘How can I do that when I can’t even break my own?’
‘But it must have happened to you surely?’ Piper said. ‘If you’re a writer, too, then you must have had this before. Why else would Alice have told us to find you?’
‘You don’t understand,’ Ramone said. ‘Alice’s curse . . . it’s different to mine, as mine was different to my grandfather’s.’
‘Your grandfather?’ I asked.
‘It happens in threes, changing from one generation to the next. Always the firstborn.’
‘Tell us,’ I pleaded.
‘It began . . .’ He hesitated before continuing. ‘It began with my grandfather. He wasn’t a good man. He was a con artist, a swindler. An excellent liar, too. He told tall tales to captivate large audiences for money. He had no patience for the written word; he spoke his stories, making them up as he went along. Word soon reached the ears of a wealthy Romany traveller. My grandfather was persuaded to meet him.
‘The traveller explained that his elderly mother, who had a great love of stories, had recently gone blind and was no longer able to read. However, she didn’t wish someone to simply read to her, she wanted her own stories. They offered my grandfather a position as her storyteller, for a great deal of money. He accepted, of course, and regaled the old lady for weeks, months on end, with his never-ending supply of tales.
‘Now this little arrangement suited my grandfather down to the ground at first. He was handsomely paid and the old woman was a good audience, for she enjoyed his stories no matter what he served up from the darkest corners of his imagination. He had heard talk that she had once been a powerful worker of Romany magic, but this didn’t bother him.
‘Over time, the old woman became ill and it was plain to see that she didn’t have long to live. It was at this time that two things happened. My grandfather was told that he should prepare to find other work. Being stubborn and greedy, however, he decided he would keep going as long as possible and squeeze every last penny from the family. He told a new and exciting story that evening, but ended it at a point where the character might easily have another adventure. The old lady, being as much a glutton for stories as he was for money, insisted he continue the next night with another story about this same character, which he did. The same thing happened the following night, and the one after, and soon the old woman was so caught up in the adventures that my grandfather did not even bother to fully end them each night, but began framing each one as a chapter in an ongoing tale.
‘The old woman grew weaker, but clung to life until it was clear that the story was the only thing keeping her going. Still he refused to finish it, despite instructions from her son to end her suffering, for the old woman overruled him. Then came the time when she begged for the end, and still he told her, “Just one more night.” And then she finally knew that he had no intention of finishing the story. Perhaps he himself didn’t even know how it ended.
‘The old lady had just enough fire left in her to get angry. And just enough anger to summon up a dying wish, which was to be a curse. She told him:
“The First shall have no ending
One story it will be.
The Second’s tales are only told
When birthplace he can see.
The Third will know no peace until
Their every yarn’s complete.
As long as blood and ink still flow
The curse will then repeat.
Only one who’s story born
Can see these words unspoken.
To stop a cursed heart beating
Is the only way it’s broken.”
‘So you see,’ Ramone continued, ‘that it’s been true for three generations. After the Romany woman’s death, my grandfather had no more stories. Just the one he’d been telling when she died. He couldn’t finish it, no matter how he tried, and it plagued him until the end of his days. From him, it passed to me—’
‘What about your own father?’ Piper asked. ‘Surely, it would have gone to him first?’
‘It was my mother’s side actually,’ said Ramone. ‘Luckily for her, she wasn’t a writer but a painter. It skipped her and came to me.’
‘So you were the Second?’ I asked. ‘Something about your birthplace?’
He nodded. ‘I can only write whenever the five-legged stag is in sight. It’s where I was born, on that hill. My mother had tried to get up to the big house for help, but I arrived before she could walk any further.’
‘What happens if you write anywhere else?’ Piper asked.
‘Nothing. I’ve tried, believe me. It’s just not possible. Pens dry up, typewriters jam, or I just plain can’t think. If that stag isn’t within viewing distance, I can’t write a word.’ He paused, his breath ragged. ‘And a writer I am, through and through.’
And Alice is the Third, Gypsy wrote. Who must finish every story she begins.
‘Yes.’ Ramone lowered his head, almost shamefully. ‘I tried so hard to discourage her from telling stories, but she chose to do it anyway. So all I could do was insist that she must finish every story she began, even if I couldn’t tell her what would happen if she didn’t. I didn’t know myself.’
‘Well, now you know.’ I gestured to Piper and Gypsy. ‘You should have tried harder! This is what happens. Characters come out. People who aren’t just paper, people who are real and have feelings—’
‘And not just people.’ The cat sat up and yawned. ‘I’m here, too, you know.’
Ramone jerked backwards. ‘Did that cat just . . . ?’
‘Yes, I did,’ said Tabitha. ‘And who might you be?’
‘Alice’s father,’ said Ramone, recovering himself. ‘And it’s no good saying I should have tried harder.’ His eyes remained fixed on the cat. ‘I did all I could to stop Alice from writing. I encouraged her to draw instead, or be creative in other ways, but still she always, always came back to stories. So I deliberately lost her work. Pretended to be so bored that I fell asleep as she read it out. Even told her . . . told her it was no good once or twice.’ His face flushed with shame. ‘All it did was made her try harder. Someone who is born to tell stories always will, no matter what. It’s like telling a lion it can’t roar, or a cat not to—’ He broke off in alarm as Tabitha made a horrid noise and coughed up a slimy mass of black fur at the foot of t
he bed.
‘Cough up a hairball?’ said Piper.
‘Beg your pardon,’ said Tabitha. ‘Better out than in, though.’
Ramone glared at the cat. ‘As I was saying, I tried to stop Alice from writing. When that didn’t work, I cut her off, even though it nearly killed me to do it. I’ve always thought that if she isn’t near me then she might have a chance—’
‘Hang on.’ My cheeks felt hot. ‘That’s why you left in the first place?’
I wondered if somewhere, somehow it was possible that Alice could hear all this. I didn’t know if that was a good or a bad thing. All these years, she had just wanted to know her father and had been pushed away. We both had Mum, but I had Dad, too, and, even though he loved Alice and she loved him, I guessed now that it hadn’t been enough for her. My heart hurt at the thought of the pain Alice must have felt and kept to herself.
‘You left Mum and Alice because you thought it could stop the curse?’
‘Yes.’ His eyes clouded. ‘I thought that she stood the best chance if I wasn’t around her . . .’ His voice faltered. ‘I would have lived with my curse, stopped writing even, if it meant I could stay with them. But I could see it was still passing to Alice, whether I continued to write or not.’
He paused again, squeezing his eyes shut. ‘Your mother brought her to see me a few times, but I did my best to keep my distance. To hide any feeling for them. When Alice was older, she came looking for me a few times, mostly just watching from a distance. But once she spoke. That’s when I told her about the curse. All I’d said before was that if she was going to tell stories then she must finish them, that only poor writers left stories unfinished, left their characters unfulfilled. I’d never mentioned the curse until that last time she came. I hadn’t wanted to frighten her. So I told her, and then I told her to get away from me.’
‘But she told me about that day!’ I said. ‘Dozens of times: how you spent the day together, telling stories, catching fish in the river which you ate for supper, and your promises to see her again. Promises you broke!’
Ramone shook his head in bewilderment, his face a mask of pain. ‘None of that happened. Not a word of it.’ He reached out as if to touch Alice’s cheek, but then withdrew his fingers.
‘She came looking all right. I was so happy to see her, my girl . . . so happy . . . but I couldn’t let myself show it. I took her on the boat, sat her down. She was shivering and hungry; she asked me to light the stove, but . . . . . .efused.’ He was nearly whispering now. ‘I said I had to save wood for when it became properly cold. I gave her water while I drank hot tea, gave her cold beans from the tin as I told her about the curse . . . and then I asked her never to look for me again. I walked her to the nearest town and phoned your mother to come and collect her. That was the last time I saw her, and that’s exactly how it happened.’
My throat tightened as I stared at my sleeping sister. ‘You’re saying that she . . . made it all up?’ I couldn’t bring myself to say the word ‘lied’. I didn’t want to think of Alice in that way.
‘She told you a story,’ said Ramone sadly. ‘The version she wanted it to be.’ He studied Alice’s face. ‘I wrote a story about a girl named Alice once.’
‘The one you gave Mum when you first met her?’ I asked.
‘You know about that?’
‘Alice told me. Then, when all this happened, I found it.’
‘Your mother kept it all these years?’ Ramone finally looked away from Alice and up at me. His grey eyes were clouded with pain.
I nodded. ‘I didn’t read it, but I think Alice might have.’
‘I’d puzzled over the curse all my life,’ he said. ‘And I’d tried and tried to find out what “story born” meant, without success. When Alice came along, I hit on an idea. I thought, perhaps, that if she was named after the girl in the story I wrote for your mother, and if I could influence her to become like that character – the one I’d imagined – then it might mean she was “story born”.’ He shook his head. ‘It was a weak idea. She was nothing like that character. The only similarity was the name.’
He smiled faintly. ‘Alice was too strong for that. She was always going to be her own person. It’s only now I know what “story born” really is.’ He looked at Gypsy and Piper and the cat. ‘You.’
‘But, for the curse to be broken, then that means one of them has to . . . has to . . .’ I faltered, unable to say what I really knew.
‘Yes.’ Ramone’s voice was grave. ‘One of them has to take a life – either mine, or Alice’s. Obviously, there’s no way I’d allow Alice to die, so it has to be me.’
‘Huh?’ Piper’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Don’t look at me! I’ve done some dodgy stuff, but I’ve never killed no one!’ He looked to Gypsy in alarm. Her expression mirrored his, and she shook her head violently.
‘You can count me out, too,’ Tabitha drawled. ‘I draw the line at rats. Besides – the curse is the whole reason we’re here. Without it, we’re nothing, just paper and ink.’
‘So where does that leave us?’ I asked. ‘We’re as stuck as Alice is! There must be another way?’
‘There is,’ Ramone said quietly. ‘We stop writing, for good.’
I shook my head. ‘Alice will never stop writing. Even if she did, what if she has children someday? The curse would still go to them, wouldn’t it?’
Ramone’s silence answered me. I thought of Dolly Weaver. She wanted Alice dead and was prepared to do it. There was a chance, the smallest chance, that the curse could be broken that way – and then, if I became master of the cat, I could bring Alice back by using one of Tabitha’s lives . . . but I couldn’t voice that thought, or even bear to keep thinking about it. It was just too huge a risk. If it went wrong, Alice would be gone for ever.
‘What I don’t understand is why Alice is in this dream state,’ Ramone muttered. ‘It makes no sense if her characters are here to pester her and give her no peace as the curse claims.’
Quickly, I told him about the balled-up paper I’d found on the hearth. ‘She wrote herself into the story. And I think it’s linked to the fortune cards.’
‘Fortune cards?’
I showed him the Sleeping Beauty card. ‘Alice was holding this when we found her. I have the rest in the pack over there.’
He recoiled from the card as if it might bite him. ‘What on earth was she doing with these? They were your mother’s!’
‘I – I think she was using them to plot the story,’ I said, scared by his reaction. ‘The way the cards can be read to tell a fortune could also be a story outline. And some of the characters, too.’ I glanced quickly at Piper. ‘The Pied Piper . . . a black cat. It’s like she took some of the ideas straight from the pack.’
‘This is bad,’ Ramone murmured. ‘Fortune cards are an old, deep magic. They shouldn’t be meddled with.’ He scratched his shaggy head, lost in thought.
The card began to feel damp in my fingers. I placed it on the floor, not really wanting to touch it. ‘Are you saying the cards have made things worse?’
‘They certainly haven’t helped. Tell me, has anything like this happened before? Has Alice ever spoken about not finishing a story?’
‘Last year,’ I said. ‘She saw people – characters. They were following her. I thought she had a fever at first, but then I saw one of them, too.’
‘What happened?’
‘She destroyed the story and they went away.’
‘Destroyed it?’ Piper’s eyes were wide with alarm. ‘Then what would happen to us? It’d be like we never existed—’
‘Destroying the story isn’t the answer,’ Ramone interrupted. ‘Not this time. Not with Alice like this. It won’t bring her back.’ He nodded to the fortune card. ‘Not now these are involved.’
‘What makes you so sure?’ I asked.
‘Because the cards are made to play out in sequence. They have to be seen through to the end.’ He paused. ‘The way the cards were made to work together means the char
acters will be drawn together, too. Like cards in a pack, or magnets.’
I thought of how Dolly had approached Piper to steal the notebook. She couldn’t have known who he was at that point, and hadn’t known until she’d got the notebook in her possession and read it. Then, out of everywhere Piper could have stashed the pages he’d ripped out, he’d found his way to Ramblebrook. What Ramone said was true: the characters had been drawn to each other, like the story was telling itself. Quickly, I filled Ramone in on all this, and everything else that had happened.
‘So what do we do about the missing notebook?’ I asked.
‘Forget it,’ said Ramone. ‘It’s worthless. You have something far more valuable.’ He gestured to Gypsy and Piper. ‘The characters themselves. What can the notebook tell you that they can’t? They know what they want. Now you have to figure out how to get it.’
What about Alice? Gypsy wrote. Isn’t she the one who has to finish this?
‘Not any more.’ Ramone stared at the fortune card. ‘It was Alice’s story to begin with, but by not finishing it she brought you here. She made it real. Here, now, all of us . . . this is the story.’
I felt as though my heart were galloping away from me. Us? We were the story?
‘But it’s not just us,’ I blurted out. ‘There are other characters, too. A man named Ramblebrook, who collects unfinished stories for a museum, and another character in the story notes . . . a writer in some sort of hospital for the criminally insane. She’s called Dorothy. From what we’ve read, there’s a story of hers she wants to get back. I think . . . I think Ramblebrook has it.’
‘But she was in a secure hospital?’ Ramone asked, frowning.
I nodded.
‘Then perhaps we needn’t worry about her just yet. But we have to be wary . . . she must have some part to play.’
‘Ramblebrook seemed pretty harmless,’ said Piper. ‘A bit nutty perhaps, but not exactly dangerous.’
Perhaps it’s not him that’s dangerous, Gypsy wrote. But what he has.
‘What do you think he wants?’ Ramone asked. ‘What’s his goal?’
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