by Ian Richards
At that moment another chasm opened up in the floor. Ebenezer jumped backwards but there was hardly any space left for him to retreat into. He stood with his back pressed against the dripping-hot wall, balanced on the edge of oblivion. The flames beneath him burned raw and hot. The slightest movement would see him plummet forward into them. He prayed for what little remained of the floor to hold, but already he could feel the wood beneath his feet beginning to split. The rising heat. The enormous space that separated him from the boy stretched out in front of him like an eternity. Even in his prime he wouldn’t have been able to jump across. The distance was too great, the fire too intense. He tried to shuffle back further but there was nowhere left to go.
‘Tony,’ he shouted. ‘The lamp! Get the lamp! If you can just—’
The floorboards cracked again, like thin ice about to give way.
With the last bit of strength in his body Tony tried stretching his fingers towards the lamp. He was frustratingly close—a few centimeters away at most—maybe less.
‘You can do it.’ Ebenezer coughed again: a violent, nasty cough. ‘You’re almost there—’
And at that moment that the ledge he was balancing on gave way. There was a snapping sound—like branches being broken in two—and Ebenezer Snout, owner and proprietor of The Gnarled Wand, London, plummeted down into the fire below. He barely had time to cry out before there was a whoosh of sparks and flame and the inferno swallowed him.
He was lost in seconds.
‘Ebenezer—’ Tony collapsed back onto the floor, coughing and crying. No, it wasn’t possible, it wasn’t. He was the one who deserved to die, not anyone else. He felt sick—overcome with grief and yet lacking the strength to do anything about it. He wanted to scream—to punch the floor. And yet all he could do was lie there, shallow breaths wheezing in his throat, tears leaking from his smoke-stung eyes. The flames danced higher now. They had the taste for human flesh and were hungry for more. Another crack, another piece of the floor fell away. More flames sprang up in celebration, more smoke pumped into the room. Tiny embers floated through the darkness, settling on his skin like fiery snowflakes.
He heard another crack. They were coming in quick succession now. This time the patch of floor he was lying on gave way. It dropped a few inches, then held, a sunken crater that could surely only last for a few more seconds at most.
It was then, as he waited for the floor to collapse, that Tony noticed the lamp. It was balanced on the edge of the crater, teetering between stable ground and the sinkhole he lay trapped in. ‘Please,’ he whispered to it. ‘Please …’
Slowly, almost reluctantly, it returned itself to solid ground. He closed his eyes. Ebenezer. Martell. Vanessa. It was all his fault and he would never get a chance to make amends. The heat beat against him in waves. He could feel himself slipping away … the noise quieting …
Suddenly, from somewhere deep within the shop, a wall gave way, jolting the entire building. The lamp tumbled into the sink-hole and came to rest next to Tony’s hand. He tried his best to rub it but the most he could manage was a light stroke—a single finger tracing a weak line down the lamp’s scorching-hot side.
It was enough. The genie billowed out at once, a whirl of ocean-green that wrapped itself around him, as cool and refreshing as ice-water. He caught the faint scent of ozone buried deep beneath the smell of smoke.
‘Master Tony.’
‘Help me,’ Tony whispered. ‘Help me, I’m dy—’
But before he could finish his sentence the Gnarled Wand collapsed in on itself in a shower of flame, smoke and sparks.
Beneath the steady patter of ash-colored rain, the fire roared long into the night.
PART THREE
30 - A Short Conversation In Marshwood
Martell lay on the bed with his hands folded behind his head. The room was sparse and poorly decorated. Flagstones that had patches of damp moss pushing through the cracks lined the floor. The walls were solid earth. Bumpy tree roots bulged out in places, as did thinner, stragglier roots, the type that looked like string and hung from the ceiling like streamers from a long-forgotten party.
There were no windows this far down. He hadn’t expected there to be. The only light came from an old oil lamp Silvertongue had smuggled in to him. It burned well enough, but had been steadily losing its power for a while. Now it glowed like a sickly will-o'-the-wisp: a shimmering globe of waxy light that barely illuminated anything beyond the length of the bed. Everything else in the cell remained dark. Lying there alone with only his imagination for company, breathing in the earthy stink of soil and tree roots, Martell couldn’t help but imagine the darkness as a sentient being, a terrible presence kept at bay only by the flickering of the lamp. Were the light to go out then the darkness would devour him.
He had been a fool to think Firefox had been telling him the truth. Blinded by his own naiveté. Fairies were not to be trusted. How many stories had he read as a child in which poor souls were tricked out of their possessions, their houses, and all their worldly goods, deceived by some grinning rogue with red hair and green eyes? How stupid had he been to really believe that this time might be different, that Firefox would let him scurry back to his old life without a second thought?
He had hoped that the tunnel would lead him back to London, but instead it had led to a dizzyingly steep staircase, one that corkscrewed down into the earth and opened out into the room that now held him prisoner. At that point the realization had hit him like a slap in the face. Stupid, Martell. Stupid, stupid, stupid … He had felt his way back up the stairs towards the door, but by then it had been locked tight. A burst of laughter had sounded out from the other side of its thick wooden frame. ‘Haroo, haroo! Oh, Black Magician, for an intelligent man you really are quite dense. Did you really think I would just let you go?’
The keyhole, a pinprick of light in an eternity of darkness, offered only a greedy green eye peering back at him. Peek-a-boo, I see you.
‘Firefox, you promised—’
But the creature had already gone, his footsteps disappearing into the distance to a rat-a-tat rhythm that suggested he was dancing.
And so Martell found himself here, trapped underground and abandoned. He imagined there were plenty of these places hidden away throughout Marshwood. Secret passages, disguised doors, tunnels to nowhere. The entire house was rotten. Had it really once been palatial? Had sunlight played across the gardens, had the corridors been bright and golden, warm with polish and natural light? The idea seemed laughable. And yet when the magician had first built it, Marshwood must have been like that. It would have been abuzz with energy, the air fresh and clear, the rooms grand and furnished. Now it held nothing but decay. A sickly, rain-damp gloom that infected everything. Even here, deep under the ground, Martell could feel the rottenness tugging at him. It was a horrible sensation, like being molested on a subatomic level. The very air felt heavy and corrupted. Each breath drawn into his lungs tasted of rotting wood, soil, tree roots, graveyards, rainstorms. He imagined that down here the house’s power was at its most potent. He could feel its dark energy pressing against him, a gnawing, uncomfortable weight that refused to let up for a second. It made him think of deep-sea divers at the bottom of the ocean, surrounded by a pressure so intense it had the power to crush their bones. He wondered if this was part of Firefox’s plan. Did the fairy lure him here to speed up his transformation? Did he long to see a man who prided himself on his intellect lose his mind and sink into hopeless servitude? Though Martell couldn’t say for sure, he suspected that this might be the case. The magic down here seemed rawer than elsewhere in the house. He could feel it, taste it, sense it. He had become aware of a persistent tingle in his bloodstream. A mental exhaustion that encouraged sleepiness, passivity, blankness.
To keep his mind sharp he practiced his times tables and solved chess problems that he scratched onto the wall with his fingernails. He set himself challenges, like listing every character in Shakespeare’s plays
or all the important events that happened in a particular year (‘1941, Battle of Stalingrad, Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, premiere of Citizen Kane, death of James Joyce …’). Though sometimes he hit upon a rhythm that kept him going for hours (‘… Otis Redding is born, Brecht writes ‘Mother Courage’ …’), he inevitably found the strain of keeping himself in such a state too much to maintain. Often he became worn out and exhausted. Then the darker thoughts would take over. He would worry about Tony and Vanessa, his shop, himself. As far as he could see—and he had looked at the problem from every possible angle—there was no way out of Marshwood unless Firefox succeeded in opening the doors. If he did that, then there was still a slim chance he might make it home. Perhaps Silvertongue or one of the other servants would let him out and he could flee back to London before Firefox noticed. But what if they didn’t? What if they forgot about him and left him to rot? He was also afraid of what would happen when Firefox, a creature who took such pleasure in tormenting others, suddenly became the most powerful being in the universe. It didn’t bear thinking about, but he could do nothing else.
How much time he spent down there in the darkness was something he would never know. When he eventually heard footsteps coming down the staircase he had been close to sleep. The sound woke him instantly. Silvertongue? Firefox? Sitting upright on his bed he peered towards the doorway and tightened his muscles. He saw firstly a haze of waxy light, then a tall, menacing shadow. Finally, to his relief, Silvertongue appeared, holding a lantern and frowning into the darkness.
‘Mr. Martell? I brought you some food. The master is busy. He doesn’t know I’m here.’
The food took the form of a cloth bundle packed with assorted snacks. Inside Martell found bread rolls, two withered apples, a hunk of cheese, some strips of cooked meat and a stale scone. There was also a flask of water, which he drank from greedily, glad to wash the taste of soil from his throat. Silvertongue hovered nervously nearby, his spectacles catching the light from his lantern and twinkling softly in the gloom. At the right angle it looked as if his eyes were aflame.
‘Thank you,’ Martell said. He broke off a chunk of bread and began to eat.
‘You’re welcome. Mr. Martell, I didn’t know he was going to trap you like this, honestly I didn’t. Whatever are we going to do?’
‘Where do things stand upstairs?’
Silvertongue glanced nervously back towards the stairwell. ‘Lord Firefox intends to get married three days from now. He says the ceremony will open up the house. For what it’s worth, I believe him.’
‘Married? But how on earth will that work?’
‘Marriage unites people, Martell. A husband and wife must share things. And if the master marries someone from outside of Marshwood then their freedom becomes his, too. The house can no longer hold him. The doors will open.’
It was beginning to fall into place. The rings. The awful loneliness brought by the house. The magician had fixed it so that the house would never reveal itself to somebody like Firefox, somebody obsessed only with himself. It would only welcome a kindly soul, somebody who had love in their heart and valued the well-being of others above themselves. He shivered. The most ingenious of plans and he had unwittingly undone it. Now Firefox stood on the precipice of greatness. A sham marriage to be held right here in Marshwood. He had no doubt that whoever the unfortunate bride would be, she would be spending her wedding night in a room like this while her husband went on the rampage.
‘What about Tony?’
At this Silvertongue paused before answering. ‘I don’t know,’ he said eventually. ‘But the girl, Vanessa, she’s been captured. Mr. Krook and Mr. Kepler took her. They’ve brought her here to Marshwood.’
‘What?’ Martell’s heart leapt into his throat. Of all the nightmares he had envisaged, this was one of the worst. The thought of a child here in Marshwood … It made his insides cold. And what about Tony, out there on his own, utterly defenseless?
‘It gets worse,’ Silvertongue continued. ‘She’s here because the master has decided that she will be his new wife. He told me his intentions a few hours ago. I was as shocked as you are.’
‘But she’s a child,’ Martell cried. ‘He’s a grown man. It’s … It’s sick.’
‘I agree. But I don’t think Firefox particularly cares who he marries, only that by the end of the ceremony he is married.’
‘Why her, though? Why not one of the women already here? There are plenty of maids drifting around.’ He hated saying such a thing, but he couldn’t help himself. The thought of Vanessa being married to a creature like Firefox turned his stomach. ‘I mean, if it’s marriage he wants—’
‘Marriage to a human, Martell, not a fairy. He needs to unite the two worlds, Faerie and human, to open the doors.’
‘All the same, he could have chosen anyone. Why did it have to be her?’
But even as he asked the question he knew the answer.
Because he could. Because it amused him.
Just like his extravagant trap with Anastasia Romanov’s doll, just like his refusal to let Martell go, it was all part of a game, all part of a performance. Firefox wanted to take everything from him, piece by piece. If it were not so improbable, he would have said the issue between them was personal. That all of this was aimed solely at getting back at him. At taunting him, humiliating him, breaking him down.
‘Vanessa won’t stand for it.’ He began talking to himself now, pacing back and forth across the floor, turning the matter over again and again in his mind. And if Vanessa was here, then where was Tony? What could possibly have separated them? ‘She’s strong,’ he said, nodding to himself. ‘Stronger than Firefox thinks. She’ll get away from him somehow. She’ll use a spell or a curse or blast her way out.’
Silvertongue shook his head. He had been appointed the bearer of bad news and didn’t appear to be enjoying it. ‘Her magic only works in the human world. Here in Marshwood, Lord Firefox is the only one who can cast spells. Why do you think none of the servants have stood up to him before? Because he has the power. Because nobody can stop him.’
‘So there’s nothing we can do …’
The darkened air between them seemed thicker now, as if it had been clotting together while they had been talking. Silvertongue shot another look back towards the stairwell. ‘I have to go,’ he said. ‘If the master knows I’ve been down here I’m liable to end up in a cell myself.’
‘You’ll keep me updated?’ Martell said, grabbing him by the arm. ‘You’ll let me know what’s happening up there?’
After a pause, the old fairy nodded.
‘I will,’ he said. ‘Though whether or not you’ll want to hear it is another matter. Goodnight, Black Magician. Sleep well.’
Lantern in hand, he ascended the stairs and disappeared.
31 - The Birthday Present
In the morning, after the fire had died out and the onlookers had traipsed away, all that remained of The Gnarled Wand were the ruins. Where the shop had once stood was a charred hole strewn with wreckage. Cold rain pattered softly on the books that had somehow escaped the fire and now littered the pavement outside. A scattering of damp hardbacks had been thrown clear from the building during one of the many explosions that hit at the end. Residents on Dover Street would talk for years to come about those final moments. How the floors fell in one by one, sending great tongues of fire shooting up to the sky, a rush of heat that smelt foully of smoke and forced everyone watching to turn away such was its intensity.
Tony returned later that same morning. He had awoken in the dewy wetness of Hyde Park, his lungs clear and the knife-wound in his chest disappeared. For the second time that week the genie had saved him. The restoration had been astonishing. His blistered black skin was once again a healthy pink. His hair had regained its original length. He seemed in perfect health, fitter than ever before.
And yet he felt awful.
He walked on trembling, unsteady legs, somehow conscious of the horrible taste of
ashes and smoke that each raindrop bestowed upon him. When he turned into Dover Street his eyes were immediately drawn towards the burnt-out remains of The Wand. It had been turned into a crime scene. Blue and white police tape flickered in the wind. A pair of sour-faced detectives poked through the wreckage, presumably looking for evidence of wrongdoing. The shorter of the two took photographs. He looked like a tourist on holiday at the end of the world. Upon seeing Tony, his partner called over: ‘On your way, son. Nothing to see here.’ And he was right: there was nothing to see. A great, yawning nothing. An emptiness that screamed.
‘Oi,’ the detective shouted. ‘Bugger off, will you?’
Tony stared at them, then turned away and let himself into Martell’s Antiques in silence. Before he stepped inside he allowed himself a final look back. The blackened remains of The Wand marked the landscape like a scar. Where once there had been three stories of bookshelves and bedrooms now there were only ruins. The absence chilled him to the bone. The thousands and thousands of books, the smell of pine and dust, the antique chairs and dramatic reading lamps—they had all been lost in the fire, all reduced to dust and ash.
The Gnarled Wand was gone.
So was Ebenezer. Poor, gentle Ebenezer. Even now the image of him falling into the flames remained seared into Tony’s mind. He could still feel the heat of the fire. Hear its crackling fury.
Pushkin sat waiting for him indoors. After setting the genie’s lamp on the front counter he petted the cat softly and fixed up some sardines for him. He then went around the shop, removing every trace of Kepler and Krook he could find. He took down the sign they had put in the window. He threw out the greasy fast-food wrappings they had left in the kitchen. He scrubbed the floors, repositioned the fallen antiques, wiped down the counters, cleaned away the rubbish and tidied Martell’s office. By the time he had finished he felt flushed through with exhaustion, but satisfied. The shop looked better than it had in years. His uncle would have been proud of him.