by Lissa Evans
‘What?’ asked Stuart feebly.
‘I am unable to judge whether it’s serious or not. I think maybe I should make a call to a medical authority.’
He disappeared for ten minutes, and then came back clutching the phone, which he held out to Stuart.
‘Hello?’ said Stuart.
‘It’s Mum. In Singapore. I’ve told your father not to panic.’
‘Good.’
‘Now, he said that you got very hot, had no fluids for the entire afternoon and then drank about a litre of water on an empty stomach. Is there anything else I should know, medically speaking?’
‘I was upside down,’ admitted Stuart reluctantly.
‘When were you upside down?’
‘Most of the afternoon.’
‘Why?’
He hesitated. ‘It was a sort of game.’
‘Right. Well, I’m not surprised you’re feeling ill. Stay cool, take lots of sips of water and have a good night’s sleep. Get Dad to phone me in the morning if you’re not completely better.’
‘OK.’ Stuart’s mum was always very sensible and unpanicked about medical things. It was everything else that she worried about.
‘Now, are you eating properly?’ she asked.
‘Yes. Dad’s cooking lots of healthy things. Lots of them.’
‘And are you having a lovely time with your new friends?’
He hesitated just a fraction before saying yes, and his mum noticed immediately.
‘What’s the matter?’ she asked.
‘I’m just missing someone,’ he muttered, thinking about Charlie, wandering on short legs through a strange and magical world.
He kept thinking about the dog even after his mother had rung off – about how he’d first seen Charlie in the Pyramid, and then, later on, April had heard the click of his toenails in the Arch of Mirrors. Was it possible that all the magical worlds were linked? Could you go into one world and come out of another? And in that case, were there still two chances left to find Charlie?
*
That night, Stuart fell asleep early and slept heavily, and when he came downstairs – feeling slightly weak and extremely hungry – it was nearly midday. His father was in the living room, staring at a blank crossword puzzle while holding a spoon and fork in one hand.
‘Hello, Dad,’ said Stuart. ‘I’m better.’
His father looked up in an unfocused sort of way. ‘Excellent,’ he said vaguely. ‘I’ve just realized that cutlery is an anagram of try clue, so I’m planning an entire cipher based around kitchen utensils. Excitingly, the word tine has five different meanings beyond that of being the projecting prong of a fork.’
‘Good,’ replied Stuart. He went into the kitchen and poured some cereal into a bowl, and he’d just taken his first mouthful when he realized that there was a large brown envelope in the middle of the table, with his name written on the front of it.
Inside was a copy of the Beech Road Guardian and a letter in April’s fantastically neat handwriting.
Stuart unfolded the Beech Road Guardian and looked at the huge headline that took up the whole of the front page:
Stuart turned to the back page. There was a small photo of Clifford, brilliantly spot-lit and holding the ace of spades in one hand and a confused-looking guinea pig in the other.
Stuart suddenly had the feeling that someone was watching him, and he looked up to see April peering anxiously through the kitchen window. He got up and opened the back door.
‘I didn’t want to ring the bell and disturb you,’ she said, ‘so I climbed over the back fence. How are you feeling?’
‘OK,’ he said. ‘I was just wondering how a guinea pig can partially disappear.’
‘It was supposed to be hidden in one of Clifford’s sleeves, but it poked its head out through the cuff and started squeaking really loudly. Did you read my letter?’
Stuart nodded. ‘I had exactly the same idea about the dog,’ he said. ‘We can go into the next illusion and get him back. As soon as we can.’
April grimaced. ‘We won’t be going anywhere unless we tell my sisters what’s going on. They’ve got the key.’
Reluctantly, Stuart nodded. ‘So when do you want to do it?’ he asked.
There was a tiny tap on the window, and they both looked up. May and June were staring in at them, their expressions identically stony.
‘How about right now?’ asked April.
STUART WENT OUTSIDE. ‘OK,’ he said to April’s sisters. ‘Get us into your dad’s shed again, and we’ll tell you everything.’
Both girls folded their arms. ‘Truth first,’ said one of them, ‘then shed.’
Stuart folded his arms as well. ‘Shed first,’ he said, ‘then truth.’
There was silence for a moment while they all glared at each other, and then there was an exasperated sigh from April.
‘For goodness’ sake,’ she said, ‘you all look ridiculous. Let’s go to the café near the builder’s yard and talk about it there. We can pool our pocket money.’
‘But …’ Stuart glanced at May and June and then turned and whispered in April’s ear, ‘But what if we tell them and then they still won’t give us the keys?’
April rolled her eyes. ‘They’re not a criminal gang,’ she hissed, ‘they’re my sisters. They’re just nosy.’
‘We’re not nosy,’ screeched one of them. ‘That’s really, really insulting, isn’t it, June? I feel really, really insulted by that description.’
‘As editor of Beeton’s leading local newspaper,’ said June pompously, ‘it would be surprising if I wasn’t curious about unusual and interesting occurrences taking place in the area.’
April jerked her head at Stuart to indicate that she needed a word with him, and he followed her to the end of the garden.
‘Look,’ she said quietly, ‘you don’t have to like my sisters, you just have to tolerate them. That’s what I do. So shall we go?’
Stuart hesitated, and then his stomach rumbled so loudly that even April heard it.
‘What you need,’ she said firmly, ‘is a fry-up.’
*
At the café, Stuart had the sausage-bacon-double-egg-beans-fried-bread-all-day-breakfast special, which he ate with great concentration and in silence.
‘OK,’ he said to April, mopping his plate with the remains of the bread. ‘I’m ready.’
‘I have never seen anyone eat that fast,’ remarked one of her sisters, looking revolted.
‘Apart from one mouthful of cereal that’s the first thing I’ve eaten since yesterday breakfast,’ said Stuart indignantly.
‘Well, don’t blame me if you get indigestion.’
‘I wasn’t going to.’
‘All right, all right,’ said April, clapping her hands as if she were a teacher. ‘Let’s get started.’
She looked at Stuart expectantly, and he glanced over his shoulder to check that no one else in the café was listening.
‘OK,’ he said quietly. ‘How it all started in the first place was that, right at the beginning of the summer holidays, I found eight coins and a note belonging to my great-uncle Tony saying that I should try and find his workshop. I started following clues, and then April helped me, but we discovered that they weren’t just ordinary clues, they were magic clues – not guinea pigs out of hats, or handkerchiefs changing colour, but real magic, and—’
‘There’s no such thing as magic,’ interrupted one of April’s sisters firmly.
‘There is, actually,’ replied Stuart.
‘No there isn’t.’
‘Shut up, June,’ said April.
‘Don’t tell me to shut up!’
‘You asked Stuart for an explanation and then you contradicted him after about five words.’
‘Yes, but there’s no need to be so rude. Don’t forget that I’m the eldest.’
‘Oh, don’t start that again.’
‘Yes, don’t start that again!’ wailed May, turning on June. ‘I’m sick of being
called the youngest just because I was born about ten minutes after April. And anyway, Mum says that actually means I’m the eldest, because I kicked you two out first and stayed till I was ready.’
‘She only says that to make you feel better,’ said April.
‘Now you’re both picking on me. It’s not fair!’
Stuart rested his chin on his hands and watched them arguing. They were certainly easier to tell apart when they were cross: May got pink patches all over her face, and moved her head around twitchily, while June became very still and serious and upright, like a disapproving headmistress.
The bickering gradually ceased until they all sat looking at him again. ‘Want me to carry on?’ he asked. June nodded rather stiffly.
‘OK, let’s skip how it all started. Once we’d found the workshop, me and April discovered a sort of key inside one of the illusions. The key looks like a star, with six spokes. Every time it’s used, it sort of unlocks a magical adventure with a puzzle to solve, and after each adventure, one of the spokes disappears.’
‘What, you mean it goes boof! and vanishes in a puff of green smoke?’ asked May, eyes wide.
‘Don’t be silly, May,’ said June. ‘Metal can’t just disappear. It’s a physical impossibility.’
‘But Stuart just said it did.’
‘Well, it can’t.’
‘Yes it can and yes it does,’ said April, sounding exasperated and getting the Magic Star out of her pocket; it was now just a V-shaped piece of metal. She held it up and May stared at it, mouth open.
‘But there are only two spokes left!’ she exclaimed, outraged. ‘That means you must have had four magical adventures already and not even told us!’
‘There is no such thing as magic,’ repeated June, not even looking at the star.
‘Yes there is,’ said April.
‘No there isn’t.’
‘Is.’
‘Isn’t.
With a loud chair-scrape, Stuart jumped to his feet and they all turned to look at him. ‘Tell you what,’ he said. ‘The only way to explain this is to show you the illusions. Can we just go to the builder’s yard? Please?’
There was a long pause and then June shrugged. ‘We’re certainly not going to get anywhere by talking,’ she said.
As they were leaving the café, May took a copy of the Beech Road Guardian out of her bag and placed it on the counter.
‘What’s this?’ asked the owner, who was buttering slices of bread.
‘Beeton’s leading local newspaper,’ said June. ‘Would you like a copy for your customers?’
‘No thanks, love.’ He gave it a nudge with his elbow and it fluttered to the floor. Stuart picked it up and saw what he hadn’t seen earlier – the article in the central pages about Rowena Allsopp and the TV interview. It was illustrated with three photographs.
Photo one showed Rowena standing next to Rod Felton, who was resting his foot on the Fan of Fantasticality. Stuart’s dad was also in the picture, gazing into space with his unfocused ‘inventing a crossword clue’ expression.
In photo two, the Fan of Fantasticality had snapped shut, and Rod Felton was flying sideways through the air, just millimetres away from cannoning into a horrified Rowena Allsopp. Stuart’s dad, meanwhile, remained in exactly the same position.
In photo three, both Rod Felton and Rowena Allsopp had disappeared out of the photograph altogether, apart from a blur that Stuart thought might be Rowena’s elbow. Stuart’s father was still gazing benignly into space, having completely failed to notice the colossal disaster occurring just to his right.
But there was something else in that third picture; something that caused Stuart to peer so closely that his nose almost touched the paper.
‘What is it?’ asked April.
He pointed.
When the fan snapped shut, a side view of the Cabinet of Blood had been revealed. The four elaborate swords hilts were silhouetted, sticking out of it. But in the middle of the dark cluster of sword hilts, May’s camera flash had picked out a tiny, perfect, V-shaped gap.
‘Brilliant!’ exclaimed April. ‘That’s where the star fits next!’
THE BUILDER’S YARD was open, and there was a lorry just inside the gates, into which two workmen were loading planks.
‘You looking for your dad?’ asked one of them as the triplets marched past.
‘No,’ said June, who had the keys in her hand. ‘We’re on a fact-finding mission.’
The shed was in the far corner of the yard. All the illusions (apart from the Reappearing Rose Bower) were still draped with heavy cloths, and as Stuart began to uncover them, it became obvious that they had been slung down rather carelessly.
Two of the mirrors in the arch were cracked, the fan was stuck halfway open, and there was a dent in the door of the Book of Peril. Worst of all, the Cabinet of Blood had been dropped on its front, and when Stuart and the triplets managed to haul it upright, he saw with a groan that all four of the sword handles were bent. He and April had never yet managed to remove the swords from the cabinet, and he imagined they’d have even less chance now.
‘I’ll go and borrow a wrench,’ said April, dashing out of the shed again.
Stuart gave the cabinet a push to see whether it still spun, and it whipped round at a satisfactory speed, casting ruby reflections across the other illusions. Despite the array of scratches and dents, he felt a thrill of pride in his great-uncle’s creations, and a sudden urge to show them off.
‘We’re waiting,’ said June, tapping her foot impatiently.
‘OK. Each of these tricks is a brilliantly engineered stage illusion,’ he explained. ‘For each one so far, we started by finding how the trick mechanism works, and then that led us to the socket where the Magic Star fits. It all began with the Pharaoh’s Pyramid.’
He pulled open the snake handle on one of the pyramid’s sides and crawled in. ‘This is really clever, this is. You’ll see that, when I close it, I’ll be able to escape out of the back by pressing a button in the floor.’ He looked up at the pair of identical faces. One of them was looking stern, in a calm sort of way, and the other looked more excited, like a kid waiting for a pantomime curtain to go up – and he realized that, for the first time since he’d met them, he actually knew which one was which. ‘You’re June,’ he said, pointing to the first, ‘and you’re May.’
‘Yes, we know,’ said May. ‘You don’t have to tell us.’
‘And, actually,’ added June, ‘it’s rude to point.’
Grinning, Stuart closed the pyramid door, waited for the luminous stars to become visible, and then pressed the button in the centre of the floor.
There was a nasty clanking, grinding sound – the sort of noise you get when a chain comes off a bicycle – and one of the pyramid sides juddered. A minute crack of light, the width of a hair, became visible. Stuart gave the side a light push, and then a harder one, but it didn’t move.
‘I thought you were supposed to be reappearing,’ shouted one of the triplets.
‘I’ve got the wrench,’ he heard April say breathlessly. ‘Where’s Stuart?’
He leaned his full weight against the side, and the hair’s-breadth crack doubled in width. ‘In here,’ he shouted through it. ‘The side’s stuck. I think it might have been damaged when it was moved. Can you try all the handles?’
He heard a series of effortful grunts from April, followed by a dejected, ‘No.’
‘I’ll get a crowbar,’ she added, disappearing again.
Stuart sat in humiliated silence until she returned a couple of minutes later and, with much heaving and levering, managed to prise open a gap wide enough for him to wriggle out.
June and May were standing with their arms folded.
‘Well, that was really impressive,’ said May. ‘Not.’
‘Wait till you see how the Arch of Mirrors works,’ said April indignantly. ‘It’s brilliant!’
She knelt beside the arch and flipped the fake mirror at the bottom. Ther
e was a loud snap, and she looked up at Stuart, white-faced, the broken mirror in her hand.
‘It strikes me that there’s evidence here of poor workmanship,’ said June, getting out her notebook.
‘It strikes me,’ said Stuart, his temper rising, ‘that there’s evidence of the person who arranged for these tricks to be moved not telling the people who were moving them that they were fragile and should be handled with care.’
April got to her feet. ‘Stuart, I’m really, really sorry.’
‘It’s not your fault,’ he muttered. ‘Let’s see what we can do with the Cabinet of Blood. We’ve never even managed to open this one,’ he added, for the benefit of April’s sisters.
They went over to inspect it.
The four sword hilts were no longer all clustered together, as they’d been in the photograph, but splayed outwards. The neat little V-shaped gap that Stuart had spotted in the newspaper was now a space big enough to put a whole hand into.
Visible between the sword hilts was a tiny ring-pull, coloured the same ruby red as the rest of the door. Stuart reached up to tug at it, but at full stretch could only just hook the first joint of his finger through the ring.
April looked away tactfully while he struggled.
‘You better do it,’ he said, stepping back, and watched as she gave the ring a tug. Nothing happened.
‘I can feel something when I pull it, though,’ she said. ‘It’s as if I’m releasing a catch or a spring.’
‘I’ve got an idea,’ said Stuart. ‘Do it again.’ This time, when she pulled, he reached up and grasped the hilt of the lowest sword. And smoothly, easily (despite its bent handle), he drew it out of the door.
He reached up for the next, and April (with her other hand) took out the top two, and the door of the cabinet swung open. The interior was painted a dull gold, dimly reflecting their faces.
‘So I suppose Teeny-tiny Tony’s assistant would step into the cabinet,’ said April, ‘and then the door would close, and then Teeny-tiny would shove the swords back in.’