by Lissa Evans
‘Well, I wouldn’t call that much of a trick,’ said June. ‘I mean, all the assistant would have to do is crouch down when the door’s shut, and the swords wouldn’t go anywhere near her.’
‘Easy peasy lemon squeezy,’ added May.
‘So what’s that then?’ asked Stuart, pointing. Inside the cabinet, protruding from the back wall, were two gold loops like big bracelets, one at neck height for an adult, one at waist height.
‘They’re to make sure the assistant doesn’t move,’ said April. She hopped into the cabinet, stood against the back wall and clicked the lowest of the loops shut around her chest. Then she reached up and snapped the other one round her forehead.
‘Go for it, Stuart,’ she said, grinning.
‘Are you sure?’ he asked.
‘Your great-uncle hasn’t let us down yet, has he?’
‘OK.’
Stuart shut the door of the cabinet, and there was a sort of squeak and then a giggle from April. He picked up one of the swords.
‘What on earth do you think you’re doing, Stuart?’ asked June, sounding more like a headmistress than ever.
‘You still OK, April?’ called Stuart.
‘I’m fine.’ April sounded surprisingly near, almost as if she weren’t inside the cabinet at all.
‘So shall I put the first sword in?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Nooooooooooooooooooooooooo!’ screamed May, lunging forward. ‘You’re going to kill my sister! I know you’re going to kill her!’
‘STOP IMMEDIATELY,’ COMMANDED June, grabbing Stuart’s sword arm. ‘I order you to stop.’
‘Help!’ screamed May. ‘Help! He’s murdering April!’
The door to the shed suddenly opened, and everyone stopped yelling. The triplets’ father was standing there, looking irritated.
‘What’s going on?’ demanded Mr Kingley.
‘Nothing,’ said everybody. Stuart hid the sword behind his back.
‘Then it’s a very noisy nothing. Where’s April?’
‘Here, Dad,’ she said. ‘At the back of the red cabinet. Spin it round.’
Doubtfully, Mr Kingley reached out a hand and rotated the cabinet, and Stuart and the other triplets gasped as April came into view, standing on the outside of the cabinet, the gold loops still fixed around her forehead and chest, her heels resting on a tiny platform. She grinned at their startled faces.
‘As the door closed, the whole back wall swivelled round,’ she said. ‘So it doesn’t matter how many swords are bunged in, I’m actually completely safe.’
‘Swords?’ repeated Mr Kingley. ‘Who’s mucking around with swords?’
‘As you know, Dad,’ said June loftily, ‘I’m not a mucking-around sort of person. I proceed carefully and methodically in everything I do.’
‘And what about your sisters?’
‘As the eldest, I’ll make sure they do the same.’
‘You are not the eldest!’ screamed May.
‘I promise we’ll be careful,’ said April solemnly and not very believably.
Her father sighed. ‘Someone told me when you were born that girls would be less trouble than boys. To which I say, Ha ha ha.’
There was a pause.
‘Please, Dad,’ said the triplets, and then all three smiled hopefully at their father with smiles that were absolutely identical.
He rolled his eyes. ‘Any more yelling and I take the key back. Stuart …’
‘Yes.’
‘I leave you in charge.’
Mr Kingley left the shed.
The girls looked at Stuart.
‘I’m in charge,’ he said. It was a brilliant feeling.
He helped April release herself from the cabinet, and they both pushed the swords back into the door.
‘I am prepared to admit,’ said June grudgingly, ‘that the cabinet trick is quite clever.’
‘But it’s not actually magic,’ squeaked May. ‘Not real magic.’
April rolled her eyes. ‘We’ve already explained about eight hundred times that you need to use the Magic Star to unlock the real magic bit.’
‘Go on then.’
‘Well, I don’t know if we can,’ said April worriedly. Stuart was trying to push the bent sword hilts back together, to re-create the tiny V-shaped gap that he’d seen in the photo, but they were too far apart.
April tried to help, but the springy, twisted metal resisted their efforts. Minutes went by; Stuart could feel himself getting red in the face. ‘It’s no good,’ he said flatly, abandoning the task. ‘We can’t do it,’ and for once it wasn’t April who contradicted him. It was June.
‘We can,’ she said.
‘How?’
‘Four swords, four of us. If we each push on one from a different angle, we’ve got a good chance of closing the gap.’
Stuart looked at April. ‘June’s right, you know,’ she muttered.
Slowly he nodded. ‘But think what that would mean …’ he replied.
‘What?’ demanded May. ‘What would it mean?’
‘It would mean you’d both come along with us.’
‘Along where?’
‘Along to wherever we’re going. Wherever the Magic Star sends us. The desert, or a hall of mirrors, or a weird maze.’
‘Or a palace full of treasure,’ added April. ‘And once we’re there, we have to solve a puzzle before we can get back. It’s really amazing.’
‘What if you don’t solve it?’ asked May.
There was a pause, and then May let out a squeak of horror.
‘You mean we might all get stuck there?’
‘Stop screeching, May,’ said June, stepping forward. ‘This is all made up anyway. There’s no such thing as magic, and as a campaigning journalist, I’m prepared to prove it. And as a press photographer, you should be prepared to document it.’ She placed a hand on one of the sword hilts. ‘Shall we try?’
Stuart hesitated for a tiny moment, weighing the options. On one side of the scales stood the triplets, shouting, arguing, issuing orders, taking absolutely no notice of what he was saying (even though their father had put him in charge); but on the other side was the next letter clue – and Charlie. And small as Charlie was, the scales were tipping in his favour.
‘OK,’ said Stuart. ‘Let’s do it.’
ALL FOUR OF them grasped a sword hilt.
‘On the count of three,’ said Stuart, ‘push them together as hard as you can, and then April can slip in the Magic Star. One … two—’
‘Shouldn’t April hold the star in place before we push?’
‘What, and get my fingers totally crushed? Thanks very much, June.’
‘It was just a suggestion.’
‘A really stupid one.’
‘I’m in charge,’ said Stuart.
‘Please don’t call me stupid, April.’
‘I wasn’t.’
‘That’s what you were implying.’
‘June was only making a suggestion, you know.’
‘That’s just typical – you always weigh in on June’s side.’
‘I do not.’
‘May, I don’t need you to defend me – I’m perfectly capable of defending myself. What I was saying to April was—’
‘I’M IN CHARGE SO WILL YOU ALL PLEASE JUST SHUT UP!’ bellowed Stuart.
There was an astonished silence. May and June’s eyes were round with shock.
‘Got the star ready?’ he asked April. She nodded, and he could see that she was biting her cheeks in an effort not to laugh. ‘On a count of three, then,’ he continued. ‘One—’
May raised her hand, as if she were in class.
‘Yes?’ asked Stuart wearily.
‘I know you all think I fuss all the time, but I just wanted to point out that since this trick got damaged on the outside, how do you know it isn’t damaged on the inside as well? The magic adventure might go all wrong and be horrible and scary instead of puzzling and exciting.’
‘You
can’t accidentally bend magic,’ said April. ‘It’s not like a spoon or something.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because there’s no such thing as magic,’ said June, for about the fortieth time.
May looked a bit sulky. ‘No one ever listens to me,’ she muttered.
‘Can we get on now?’ asked Stuart. ‘One … two … three.’
He was standing facing a brick wall, his nose almost touching the rough surface. Startled, he took a step back, and realized that there was a brick wall on either side of him as well, close enough for him to be able to touch both at the same time. He looked up, and saw that the walls were enormously high, and at the top of them was a white ceiling, brilliantly lit.
And then he turned round.
His first thought was that he was standing at the end of a bowling alley lane. Between the parallel brick walls stretched a narrow patterned pathway, curving gently up towards what looked like a set of battlements.
None of the triplets were in sight. ‘Anyone around?’ shouted Stuart. ‘April? May? June?’ He thought he could hear a distant reply somewhere to his left, but he couldn’t make out the words. ‘Charlie!’ he called, and then remembered that ‘Charlie’ probably wasn’t even the dog’s real name. ‘Champ!’ he tried. ‘Chester! Cheddar! Chumley!’ There was no answering bark.
Stuart looked at the path beneath his feet. The paving stone he was standing on was plain white, but the next one was decorated with a large red circle, the third had a painting of a duck on a pond, and the fourth showed a blue and white teapot. The images were like the ones on picture dominoes: simple and clear. Stuart looked all around to see if there was any sort of clue for him to find, or read, or listen to, but there was nothing obvious. He stepped forward onto the red circle.
Instantly the entire paving stone shattered like a cream cracker and he dropped into water. Dark, freezing water – water so cold that, for a few seconds of frantic thrashing, he couldn’t even catch his breath, and then he surfaced again, gasping and coughing, got his elbows onto the edge of the plain white slab, and hauled himself out.
He stood panting and shivering, his heart a drum-roll.
That was dangerous, he thought, staring down at the rectangle of dark water. Really, properly dangerous.
And then he thought: What if May was right? What if the trick was damaged on the inside as well as the outside?
The surface of the water was smooth now, and slate-grey. He could easily step right over it, onto the paving stone decorated with the duck, but now he was terribly afraid of what might be beneath it. And yet what choice did he have? He sat down, stretched out his legs, and gave the duck a couple of whacks with his heels. It seemed solid enough, so he stood up and quickly (before he could lose his nerve) jumped onto it. For a couple of seconds nothing happened, and then he realized that he was sinking – sinking very gradually into the stone, as though he were standing on treacle. The surface lapped up the sides of his shoes and began to close over his toes. Frantically he pulled up one foot, but the other sank deeper, and it was a truly horrible feeling, as if his leg were being swallowed by a giant throat. Stuart could feel it beginning to tighten around his ankle and he lunged forward, falling on his knees onto the next paving stone. His swallowed foot jerked free, minus its shoe, and he knelt, soaked and trembling, and waited for something even worse to happen. A minute went by, and then another. Water dripped off his clothes and pooled around him. The paving stone that he was kneeling on, with its picture of a jolly blue teapot, remained an ordinary paving stone, and at last he got to his feet. His squeezed foot felt all wobbly and feeble, and so did his brain.
From somewhere to his right he heard a shriek, and he called out, ‘May, is that you?’ but there was no reply.
He tried to gather his thoughts. The circle and the duck had been disasters, but the teapot was OK. Could it be a code? Or a visual crossword? ‘Teapot,’ he said out loud. Was there another word for a teapot? He didn’t think so.
He looked at the paving stones ahead of him, each printed with a clear, simple picture, and he estimated that he could jump as far as the third, but no further than that. Which meant that he had to choose between a parachute, a cow and a leg.
‘Chute. Jump. Fall. Milk. Moo. Udder. Limb.’ The leg in the picture was bent as if about to kick a ball. ‘Kick. Bend. Knee.’
Nothing seemed to make any sense, or to fit with anything else. ‘Great-Uncle Tony,’ he said. ‘What were you thinking?’ And then he knew.
The clue was in his great-uncle’s name.
STUART LOOKED DOWN at his feet, and then at the third paving stone from where he stood.
‘Tea,’ he said, looking at the teapot. ‘Knee,’ he added, looking at the leg. ‘Tea Knee. As in teeny. As in Teeny-tiny Tony Horten.’ And then he took half a step back, clenched his fists, breathed deeply and launched himself into the biggest standing jump he’d ever done, landing with a thud on the rock-solid picture of the leg.
Eagerly he scanned the path ahead, looking for a picture of a tie. There wasn’t one. Puzzled, he looked again at the next three images: a pie, a pig and a fork. The pig was standing behind a fence. ‘Tea Knee Sty-ny Tony Horten?’ he muttered. ‘Tea Knee Pie-ny?’ And then he gazed at the fork and remembered his father’s lecture on cutlery. What were the prongs of a fork called?
Tines.
‘Tea Knee Tine,’ he said, and gave a confident leap across to the third paving stone. The next two were plain white, and he shuffled across them cautiously, feeling relieved to be on a little island of safety. He was feeling warmer now, and a bit more confident. He wondered how the triplets were getting on. He hadn’t heard any shrieks for a while; he wasn’t sure whether that was a good or a bad thing.
‘April?’ he shouted. ‘Can you hear me?
There was no reply.
‘Right,’ he said to himself. ‘I’m looking for the letter E.’
And it was there, on the very next paving stone. Except that it was a rather curly-looking E that could equally well (he decided, looking at it sideways) be a 3. Or even an M. Or a W.
He gave the stone with the curly E a jab with his foot, and a hole instantly opened up. A vile-smelling black goo began to slide out of the gap, and Stuart jumped back hastily. Holding his nose, he craned to see the next two paving stones. He could make out a compass and a flamingo. Neither seemed to have any connection with the letter E. The black slime was still pouring steadily out of the hole, forming large bubbles which popped with the noise (and smell) of a particularly horrible fart. Stuart took another step back, and tried to think.
Compass.
Flamingo.
The goo spluttered and oozed towards him. Stuart took yet another step back, thinking that it was lucky he had the mini-island of three paving stones to retreat to – and then it occurred to him that with such a long run-up, he could jump much further than before – he could reach the fourth, or even the fifth stone ahead. The trouble was that from this distance it wasn’t so easy to see the images.
The fourth flagstone was printed with an orange elephant but the fifth was covered in rows and rows of little pictures like hieroglyphs, of which he could only make out one or two of the nearest – a windmill, and what looked like a yo-yo, and a zebra. The black goo was beginning to flow over his feet as he dithered over the clues. Elephant began with an E but it couldn’t be that easy, could it? Flamingos laid Eggs. One of the points of the compass was East. And what were all the little pictures about? What did a windmill and a yo-yo have in common with a zebra?
Suddenly he smacked his forehead in realization. The alphabet, of course. And now he could see there was a gap in the top row of the little pictures. One letter was missing, and he just knew which one it would be.
Hastily he backed off as far as he could, and then sprinted forward, fists clenched, legs pumping. His intention was to launch himself like an Olympic long-jumper, but the last couple of steps of his run-up were taken through the overflowing slime.
One foot slid, then the other, and instead of pedalling majestically into the air, he found himself lurching forward like a flung pancake. He belly-flopped to the ground.
Cautiously he opened his eyes a crack, and saw the little alphabet pictures just a couple of centimetres from his face. Apple, ball, chair, dog, fish, grapes … Which meant that the top half of his body was on the right paving stone. He moved one of his legs, and then the other; the surface they were resting on seemed to be tipping, and with a burst of panicky speed, he scrabbled to safety.
He sat up and looked back.
The elephant paving stone had swung open like a revolving door, one side of it sticking straight up in the air, the other pointing downwards into a deep, dark hole. Stuart peered into it, and saw a set of narrow steps spiralling into the depths. If he’d missed his footing he could have broken his leg, or worse. A smell of ancient damp wafted out of the hole, and he stood up hastily, eager to get away. The path was climbing quite steeply now, and he noticed that the walls on either side of him were lower too, so that there was a gap between the top of them and the ceiling.
‘OK,’ he said, scanning the paving stones ahead, ‘so I’ve done Tea Knee Tine E. And now what I need to find is a picture of a—’
‘TONE!’ shouted someone on the other side of the wall to his right.
‘April?’ called Stuart. He’d never been so pleased to hear someone’s voice in his life. ‘It is April, isn’t it?’
‘Yes! Hooray, I’m sick of being on my own and I’m really, really worried about my sisters. I’ve been keeping track of May’s shrieks, but I haven’t heard June at all. This place is frightening.’
‘Did you fall in the water?’
‘Yes. And one of my shoes got swallowed up and my feet are covered in that vile, disgusting black slop, and I nearly fell down that staircase under the elephant stone.’
‘Me too. I did exactly the same thing!’
‘Great minds think alike.’
‘You haven’t seen the dog, have you?’
‘No,’ she said dolefully. ‘Not yet.’