by Webb, Holly
‘She was trying to kill you!’ Henrietta snarled back. ‘Well, she might have killed you, if the spells had been too strong. And she definitely would have killed Georgie.’ She looked across at Lily’s father, slumped on the stage. ‘She may have killed your father,’ she added quietly. ‘I can’t even see Peter.’
‘I know...’ Lily gulped. ‘But I don’t want to be like she is.’
Argent shook the limp bundle in his jaws, and growled. ‘You are far too gentle. She would have no hesitation in killing you. Your father held back, Lily, and she’s half killed him.’
‘Only half?’ Lily asked, her voice wavering.
‘He’s alive,’ the dragon admitted, almost reluctantly. He wanted to rip their mother apart, Lily could tell. She was making it harder for him. ‘And so is Rose – but only just. Both of them will be weakened, for a long time.’
‘Where’s Peter?’ Daniel asked, walking towards them, cradling the pistol in his hands. ‘I saw him fall...’
Lily closed her eyes. She had been trying not to see that slow, flailing fall again, but it kept flashing in front of her. It reminded her horribly of the time Peter slid from Argent’s back, and she’d thought he was lost. Now, she knew that he must be. The blast of her mother’s magic had felled two great magicians. What chance did a poor mute servant child have?
‘Over the front of the stage, between the gas lights,’ she whispered. And then she looked up at Argent, and her voice shook as she told him bitterly, ‘I take it back. You can eat her. I don’t care.’
Henrietta looked up at her, her glittering black eyes sunken in the furry folds around her face. She liked Peter, Lily knew. She liked his quietness, his slow, methodical way of doing things. He could almost understand her, now, even though like Argent she didn’t talk the same way a human would. She walked slowly, heavily over towards the edge of the stage, and looked out across the dark, dusty velvet of the seats. ‘I can’t see him,’ she muttered, peering down reluctantly.
‘You mean there’s nothing left?’ Lily’s voice shook, and she laid Rose gently down and hurried to follow Henrietta, peering anxiously out into the auditorium. There was such a sense of breathless waiting that she could imagine the seats were all full. But this wasn’t a trick. Daniel wasn’t going to reveal that his young assistant was behind the velvet curtain after all, or miraculously back in one piece, or shooting up from a hidden trap door.
Or posing dramatically at the back of the auditorium. Lily swallowed, gazing at the figure in the darkness. Someone was there, standing at the back row of seats, and looking about as if he wasn’t sure what was going on. Lily stared, as whoever it was walked shakily down the threadbare carpet. And then she jumped, shrieking, from the front of the stage, and flung herself stumbling at Peter.
‘We thought you were dead! We thought she’d turned you into dust! How did you do it?’
Peter only shrugged wearily. He was very pale, but he seemed to be all in one piece as Lily pulled him back towards the stage.
‘The spells, remember?’ Henrietta nudged her cold nose into Lily’s hand, and stood there looking down on them, her tail twisting importantly. ‘All those spells from Fell Hall. He’s immune now – the dragon said so, when he walked through your father’s go-away spell.’
‘I had forgotten,’ Argent agreed, sounding surprised, and rather muffled, as he still had a mouthful of unconscious enchantress. He shook her a little, enjoying the way she swung limply in his jaws, and Lily shuddered. If they didn’t work out what to do with her soon, he would eat her, Lily was sure.
‘Please don’t do that again,’ she told Peter, as he gave her a leg up onto the stage, and she hauled him after her. ‘You always seem to end up saving us. It isn’t that I’m complaining, but if you keep doing it you’ll get hurt. Did you know she couldn’t get you with a spell?’
Peter just shrugged again, and sat down next to Lily’s father, loosening the silk scarf he had tied around his neck as a cravat, and fanning him gently with one hand. Then he dug out his notebook, and scrawled, Didn’t think. Hate her. Sorry, but it’s true. Wasn’t going to let her make you like G.
‘I hate her too,’ Lily said slowly. It was a strangely helpful thing to say. It ought to be wrong to hate one’s mother, Lily thought, but then most people’s mothers weren’t trying to use them as magical death traps. ‘What are we going to do with her?’
Can’t he get rid of her? Peter suggested, jerking his head towards Argent.
‘With pleasure,’ the dragon muttered.
‘She’s still my mother,’ Lily said in a small voice. ‘I know I said he could eat her, but I can’t just tell him to…’
‘I wouldn’t need to be told... Choose quickly, Lily. There’s so much delicious magic inside her. Dark, like that chocolate Daniel brought for me. Strong, and a little bitter. Hurry up, do.’
Lily looked frantically around the stage. If only her father or Rose or even Georgie could help her decide, but all three of them were unconscious, wiped out by the power of the magical duel. Daniel had gathered Georgie into his arms, and he was gazing down at her worriedly. Now that the stagehands and some of the performers were starting to creep back onto the stage, he directed some of them to carry Rose and the girls’ father to their rooms. There was no older magician to ask. She would have to decide for herself.
Lily watched Princess Jane leaning anxiously over Rose, with a little bottle of smelling salts in her hand, and frowned. The princess had been shut up at Fell Hall for so long. That was what you did with people you wanted to get rid of, but couldn’t bring yourself to kill. You locked them up, for ever and ever.
Even that seemed horribly cruel, and Lily rubbed her hands wearily across her eyes. Wouldn’t it be better to be dead? But then, her mother had killed so many people. Lily’s own sisters. Georgie, almost. Perhaps it was right to be cruel.
Henrietta nudged her leg lovingly, and Lily picked the dog up, rubbing her cheek against the velvety fur. ‘I don’t know what to do,’ she whispered.
‘I don’t have any good ideas,’ Henrietta admitted reluctantly. ‘Not very good ones, anyway. I don’t suppose we could send her back to Merrythought somehow? And shut her up there?’
‘Maybe...’ Then Lily suddenly hugged her tighter. ‘Merrythought! Henrietta, like the picture! The one I took you out of! Look...’ She hurried to the back of the stage, with Peter following her, and Argent swinging his head round suspiciously to see. ‘This canvas flat...’
The ballet scene was a romantic one, based on the story of the Sleeping Beauty, with some new music by someone whose name Lily could never remember. The scenery was a riot of roses, spreading over a palace, cleverly painted so that the stone walls and towers seemed almost solid, stretching back into the airy nothingness behind the stage. Lily stood below one of the new flats, canvas stretched over a wooden frame to hold it up, and pointed. ‘There, in the window, do you see?’
‘No,’ Henrietta said flatly, staring at the dark opening painted into the stonework. ‘There isn’t anything there!’
‘But there could be... Argent, do you see what I mean? I brought Henrietta out of a painting with my first spell, I tried to draw her, and she came out of the painting to me. Does it work the same way to put someone into a painting?’
The dragon sighed gustily, sending ribbons of smoke twisting up around the empty window. ‘I suppose it could,’ he admitted. ‘I like it... Not as much as eating her, admittedly, but it has a certain charm.’
‘You’re going to paint her into my scenery?’ Daniel asked, staring at Lily’s mother in horror.
‘If we can work out how,’ Lily agreed.
‘But we reuse these flats, Lily. We paint over them. It won’t be a tower scene for ever.’
Lily chewed her bottom lip. ‘I think that whatever you paint, she might always be there. Please, Daniel. I don’t know what else to do wit
h her. I know it seems awful to shut her up in a painted prison, but she’ll have the shows to watch, at least.’ Lily gave a half-hysterical little giggle, and Peter scowled at her anxiously.
Henrietta, who was far less patient than he was, just bit her, nipping sharply at her ankle. ‘Stop it, Lily!’
‘Sorry...’
‘You can do it,’ Daniel said reluctantly. Gently, he passed Georgie over into the huge arms of Sam, who built the sets. ‘But if she starts jinxing the dancers, I’m burning that flat. Got it?’
‘I wouldn’t tell them,’ Henrietta suggested. ‘You’re all superstitious enough as it is.’
‘Hurry then,’ Argent growled. ‘She’s flickering – I can feel her magic waking again.’
Lily ran to the pile of paint pots and brushes, and Peter put up the stepladder for her. He and Daniel stood on either side of it, holding it steady, as Lily climbed up, balancing herself on the top of the ladder and trying not to wobble. She had flown on dragonback; how could she be scared when she was only this far up?
‘Lift me up there,’ Henrietta commanded Daniel importantly. ‘I understand these things, being a painting myself. She needs me to help.’
Henrietta wedged herself around Lily’s feet, peering at the black canvas, as Lily tried to drag the magic out of her bones. It seemed sunk deep inside her, after the fight. She felt drained and achy. But this was her chance to protect Georgie, and herself. She had to get it right. Closing her eyes, she tried to remember those miserable years back at Merrythought, hiding as her mother stalked past. Georgie’s terror as the spells began to take hold of her. The way Mama had sent Marten after them, to drag them back. She felt her magic stir sluggishly inside her, and gripped a paintbrush tightly, begging for this to work.
‘Keep still, little one,’ Argent murmured. ‘Don’t fall. There, is that better?’
Lily glanced down and saw that he had dropped her mother, keeping her pressed under one massive clawed foot. Now he twisted his long neck around so that his head was next to the ladder, and his huge, glittering black eyes were gazing into hers. She felt a sudden swooping surge, like those strange dreams she’d had when she was smaller, when she’d been sure she could jump down the main staircase and float. The power of the dragon magic that Argent breathed over her made Lily dizzy, but it was a wonderful, exciting dizziness that made everything seem possible.
The paintbrush was hanging slackly in her fingers, but all at once Lily felt it twist and shiver, and Peter let go of the ladder for a moment to pass her up a pot of paint. He looked confused, as though he thought someone had asked him to do it, but he didn’t know quite who.
Lily dipped the brush into the paint and touched it to the canvas, and then it seemed to take on a life of its own, darting madly here and there. ‘Colours...’ Lily muttered. ‘It needs colours.’ She thought of her mother’s dark hair, and rust-red dress, the creamy paleness of her skin, and felt the brush falter in her hand, confused. Then she remembered the paintbox – it must have belonged to some long-ago Powers girl, being taught pretty watercolours in the schoolroom. She had found it shoved to the back of a shelf, covered in dust, with its catches rusted and the little tubes all dried up, just the merest smudges of colour around the lids. But she remembered the names. She had spent days chanting them to herself. Starved of magic as her mother lavished it all on Georgie, she had thought they sounded like a spell, even then.
‘Alizarin crimson, Chinese white,
Lamp black, Viridian,
Scarlet lake and Sophie’s yellow,
Caput mortem...’
Lily chanted on and on as she felt the brush dance in her fingers. A delicious warmth was stealing over her, the sense of a complicated spell working as it should, and she shoved the knowledge of what it was doing to the back of her mind. She could not care, couldn’t falter. It would spoil the spell. ‘Caput mortem...’ she snarled. One of the scene painters had told her that it meant death’s head, because it had once been made from ground-up bodies, ones that had died thousands of years ago and been wrapped in bandages to preserve them. Mummies, he had said they were called, almost like Mama... She didn’t believe it, quite...
‘Caput mortem,’ Lily growled out, forcing the brush over the canvas, feeling it fight her. ‘Lemon. Violet. Permanent rose!’
What had Mama done to Rose? She must keep on...however hard it was to condemn her own mother to a painted prison.
‘Hooker’s green, Indigo, Aureolin... Ultramarine!’ Lily shivered, and shook herself, and dropped the paintbrush. She swayed on the top step of the ladder, and Henrietta yelped, and then she stopped falling, caught in the talons of the dragon who was watching her spell.
‘Where’s Mama?’ Lily whispered, looking down anxiously. He had caught her with the same foot he had been using to hold her mother down. ‘You didn’t let her go?’
‘There, look.’ Argent’s voice was a satisfied rumble. ‘Your spell worked. I still say she would have been better eaten, but it was a good spell, Lily. Full of deep power.’
‘She’s there?’ Lily asked, twisting herself around his claws to peer up. ‘Oh...’
Her mother was standing in the window, staring out across the stage. Lily had expected her to look angry, as though she was about to tear the canvas apart with her nails and fight her way free. But instead her mother’s face was peaceful, almost dreamy. Her painted eyes lacked the angry glitter that they’d always had in life, and the hand resting on the stone sill was gently curled.
‘She looks happy...’ Lily whispered.
Argent snorted, a small spurt of flame spitting out of his mouth. ‘She doesn’t have to fight any longer, does she? You’ve done well, Lily, I admit.’
Henrietta launched herself from the top of the ladder, into Lily’s arms. ‘Good. One down. How many more to go?’
Henrietta’s words kept ringing in Lily’s ears as she hurried along the warren-like passages under the theatre, going between her room, where Georgie was curled small and shrunken into the bed, and her father’s, with occasional visits to Rose, who was being waited on by the princess. Princess Jane seemed to be enjoying herself. She confided to Lily that she felt useful, for once, working on some sewing for Maria while she watched over Rose.
Both of the older magicians had woken up, briefly, but they were still exhausted from the battle, too weary to make plans with. Lily had hoped that her father would be well enough to recast the tapestry, so they could try to untangle Mama’s spells from Georgie again. But he was still too dazed, and Georgie hadn’t woken at all. She seemed to be dreaming, twisting painfully in the bed and crying out. Lily left Henrietta guarding her whenever she left the room.
How many more of the conspirators were there? Their mother had mentioned that there were other ‘spell-children’, prepared as Georgie had been. She’d even known the Dysart girls by name, the twins Cora and Penelope, who had betrayed Lily and Georgie and had them sent to Fell Hall. She had also said that there was only a little time left. The plot must be arranged for very soon. But they had no way of finding out. Lily felt choked with fear as she scurried about deep under the theatre. How were they going to stop it? What if the attempt on Queen Sophia’s life was today? It could be, for all Lily knew. If it went ahead, no one would ever believe that magic could be trusted.
The day after the great fight on the stage, and the painted spell, Lily left Henrietta sleeping next to Georgie, and climbed wearily up to the stage, sitting down on a pile of ropes by the painted tower. The flat was dry now, and it had been stacked up in a pile of others, ready for the performance that night, but Lily could still see the edge of the tower and the window. Her mother was gazing out across the fairyland she was painted into. Lily was sure she could see more than the back of the flat in front.
‘I don’t suppose I should talk to you, really...’ she murmured. ‘In case it gives you ideas. But Danie
l’s always busy, and so is Peter now.’ Daniel and Sam had adopted the mute boy as an extra member of the stage crew, once Lily’s father had shown them how cleverly he scribbled sets and gadgets in his little notebook. Now he was constantly running after Sam, with all the tools that Sam hadn’t realised he needed. ‘Besides, it’s hard sometimes, when he has to write everything down. It makes him always so serious. I wish I knew what to do next. You said there was only a little time.’ She looked up at the stripe of pale, calm face that she could see. ‘You know what’s going to happen, don’t you? No one else seems to understand how important it is... We don’t have time to wait, we need to work out the rest of the plot. But I don’t know where to go next. Ohhh!’ Lily groaned angrily, and buried her head in her folded arms.
‘Lily!’ There was a frantic clicking and scrabbling of claws, and Henrietta skidded across the stage, barging into Lily in her corner. ‘You have to come!’
‘What is it? Did Georgie wake up?’
Henrietta shook her head briskly, her ears flapping. ‘No. She’s still asleep. I think she is, at least.’
Lily stood up, shivering, and stared at her. ‘You think?’
Henrietta shrugged, suddenly looking very human. ‘Her eyes are open,’ she said slowly. ‘And she’s walking, but I don’t think she’s awake.’
‘Walking where?’ Lily yelped. ‘Show me!’
‘I’m trying, I’m trying,’ Henrietta muttered crossly. ‘This way. She wasn’t going very fast.’ She set off, sniffing busily as she led Lily into the passageways behind the wardrobe room and the cast dressing rooms. ‘Close now. She has got further than I thought she would... Ah!’
They rounded a corner and found Georgie, in her threadbare nightgown, pulling at one of the doors that led into the alley outside the theatre.
‘Georgie, where are you going?’ Lily asked, hurrying up to her. She tried to take Georgie’s arm, but her sister ignored her entirely. It was as if she didn’t even feel Lily touching her. She just kept pulling at the bolts on the door, shaking them and running her hands over the massive keyhole. Lily squashed herself against the door so she could look at Georgie’s face. Henrietta had said that she was still asleep, but Lily didn’t see how she could be. She’d just bump into things, surely. She remembered Georgie wandering the passageways at Merrythought in a dreamworld of her own magic – she had always looked pale, and pinched and far away. Henrietta had just mistaken that for sleep.