by Chris Ward
Downstairs, Gubbledon was reading books in his office, but the common room was empty. Wilhelm slipped out, quickly throwing on a Scatlock cape and dashing across the narrow cliff path to the school’s main building.
He was just pushing through the doors, when he bumped into someone.
Both of them let out a scream. Expecting to see the Dark Man’s face itself, Wilhelm looked up to see it was only Benjamin.
‘Quick!’ he hissed, pulling off his cape. ‘We have to find Cuttlefur. He’s up to no good.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘He spouted a bunch of rubbish to Miranda about how she could leave and find her family, and then he went running off to the science block. He looked up and saw Rick, and he didn’t do anything. He just smiled and waved. He knew I was watching him. Whatever he’s gone to do, we have to stop him.’
‘Calm down,’ Benjamin said. ‘Look, it might be nothing.’
‘It isn’t!’ Wilhelm shouted. ‘I’m sure of it!’
Without waiting for Benjamin to follow, he raced off, but a few seconds later he heard his friend’s footsteps behind him and glanced back to see Benjamin following.
‘Look, I don’t have time to explain properly,’ Wilhelm said, as he peered around the wall into the adjoining corridor. ‘You’ll have to trust me. Who goes into the science block at this time of night unless they’re causing trouble or stealing something?’
‘We do,’ Benjamin said.
‘We’re a special case,’ Wilhelm said. ‘He’s not. Man, you should have heard what he was saying to Miranda. It was just lie after lie.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like he had come here to bring her back home. Like they were going to find a way back to England when we go to the Bay of Paper Dragons.’
Benjamin didn’t answer right away. Wilhelm turned to look at him. ‘Don’t you believe me?’
‘Of course I do.’
‘Well, come on, then.’
The doors to the science block lay up ahead, and Wilhelm broke into a run, slamming through them.
Instead of swinging open smoothly, though, they collided with something coming the other way.
‘Ow!’
Cuttlefur sat on the ground, rubbing his forehead. As he started to get up, Wilhelm pushed him backward and snatched out of his hands the bag Cuttlefur was carrying.
‘What have you been stealing, you villain?’
Farther up the corridor, a light clicked on, while behind, Benjamin ran through the doors, right into the back of him. Wilhelm backed away as Professor Loane stepped into the corridor.
‘Um, what’s going on here, then?’
‘I caught him stealing stuff from the science labs!’ Wilhelm shouted, pointing at Cuttlefur. ‘Didn’t he, Benjamin?’
Benjamin shook his head. ‘I don’t know….’
Professor Loane’s face was as dark as a thundercloud. ‘Cuttlefur came to collect some catch-up homework I had him do,’ the professor said. ‘And it looks to me that you two are not only out of your dorms, but that you also just assaulted him.’
‘We did no such thing!’
‘It was an accident, sir,’ Cuttlefur said, glancing up at Wilhelm to give him the tiniest of private smiles. ‘I don’t think they knew what they were doing. They were just kids playing games. It’s a bit late at night to be playing kiss-chase, but thats what it looks like.’
‘That’s very nice of you to say, Cuttlefur,’ Professor Loane said, ‘but discipline is important, and I think these boys need to learn some.’
Wilhelm glanced back at Benjamin, who rolled his eyes and gave a little shake of the head. Nice one, he mouthed.
15
Discovery
‘He got a thousand and I got five hundred,’ Benjamin said. ‘And we have to apologise to Cuttlefur in front of the school at tomorrow’s Monday morning assembly.’
Miranda’s eyes were like smoking coals. ‘He’ll wish he could have stayed in the Locker Room forever after I’m done with him,’ she said. ‘Where is he?’
‘He’s still down there. He’s not talking to me, either, because I didn’t back him up. What was there to back up, though?’
‘How did he know Cuttlefur was going to the science block?’
Benjamin said nothing. If Miranda found out about Rick and the spy camera, she would never speak to Wilhelm again. The situation was bad enough without him making it worse, and he did feel bad for not sticking up for his friend. While he didn’t particularly like Cuttlefur much, he couldn’t just spread lies about him. And Cuttlefur hadn’t actually done anything wrong that Benjamin could see. If he liked Miranda, it was understandable. She was kind of fiery … but also kind of nice.
Not that he’d ever let her know that.
‘I told him I saw Cuttlefur heading that way, and I think he got the wrong idea,’ Benjamin said. ‘It was probably all my fault.’
Miranda shook her head. ‘He always wants to believe in conspiracies. I mean, haven’t we got enough to worry about without getting after each other? Cuttlefur’s stuck here, just like the rest of us.’
Benjamin didn’t know what to say. He wanted to ask Miranda what Cuttlefur had said about leaving Endinfinium, but that would betray Wilhelm.
Instead, he decided to go and see if Wilhelm had finished in the Locker Room yet.
Fifteen minutes later, he squeezed into the little cubicle where Wilhelm sat, having managed to blag his way past the fearsome sin keeper by pretending to have forgotten something.
‘Well, if it isn’t the traitor himself,’ Wilhelm said. ‘Did I thank you for sticking up for me? If I didn’t, it must have slipped my mind.’
‘I’m sorry, but you have to admit, you went a bit crazy, there.’
Wilhelm tossed the object he was cleaning back onto the conveyor belt. ‘You weren’t there. You didn’t see the way he looked at Rick. He’s up to something, I know it.’
‘Did you record the video? Perhaps you could show it to the teachers.’
Wilhelm shook his head. ‘The computer tablet I’ve got it hooked up to doesn’t work properly. It’s only got a live-stream mode. I don’t know how to get it to record.’ He turned back to the conveyor belt, then stopped. ‘I don’t suppose you could ask someone for me? I got Ms. Xemian to help me with it, so you can’t ask her, but one of the science teachers might help if you pretend it’s for a school project.’
Benjamin tried to look enthusiastic, having now regretted coming down here. ‘Look, just tell me where it is and I’ll see what I can do.’
‘In the box under my bed. Can you have a look at the video and find out where Rick went? I didn’t have time to call him back before I was sent off to enjoy myself down here.’
‘Sure, I’ll see if I can figure it out.’
‘Thanks. And about all that mess with Cuttlefur … I don’t know, maybe I was overreacting. Probably not, but maybe. Thanks for showing up, though. Anyway, I’d better get back to this, otherwise I won’t finish in time to join the school trip, and Professor Loane said I’d get left behind.’
Benjamin returned to the dormitories, where the clock on the wall above Gubbledon’s office told him he was late for lunch. Ordinarily that would have bothered him, but with everyone out, he had a chance to check out this camera of Wilhelm’s.
The box was under the bed as Wilhelm had told him. He pulled it out to find a little cardboard nest where he supposed Rick would sleep—assuming reanimated plastic bags needed sleep—and a square computer tablet which he switched on.
A grainy, live video feed appeared. At first, Benjamin wasn’t sure what he was seeing, until he realised it was a shot of Cuttlefur walking through a tunnel, illuminated by occasional candles flickering in braces on the walls.
So, Rick had picked up his trail again in one of the basement levels, though Benjamin couldn’t be sure. Intrigued to see where Cuttlefur was going, he squatted down and pulled the computer up onto his knees.
‘What have you got there?’
At the sound of Miranda’s voice, Benjamin spun. She was standing in the doorway, hands on her hips, one fiery red eyebrow raised.
‘You’re … supposed to be … at lunch,’ Benjamin stammered.
‘So are you. What’s that? I saw you pull it out from under Wilhelm’s bed.’
‘Nothing.’
He tried to hide the computer tablet under his arm, but it was too late. Miranda had marched across the room and man-piled him, shoving him to the floor and jerking it out of his hands.
‘What is it?’
She turned it over just as Rick dove at Cuttlefur, and the blue-haired boy’s face was caught in the centre of the screen.
‘Oh!’ Miranda cried, dropping the computer with the suddenness of surprise rather than anger. The tablet spun in the air and landed facedown on a little nodule of wood sticking up from the floor. Its plastic screen broke with a soft crack.
‘You’re spying on him!’
‘Not me—’
‘Wilhelm, then. That scoundrel. How?’
Miranda grabbed the box and pulled it forward. One corner of a piece of plastic packing tape lay among the box nest of shredded cardboard, and Wilhelm had written Rick on the side of the box in ornate felt tip pen.
‘What’s “Rick”?’
Benjamin didn’t dare lie. ‘His Scatlock. He found it while helping Professor Eaves. It had a broken wing and he … tamed it.’
‘Showing his sensitive side, eh? That little runt. I’ll kick his butt for this.’
And before Benjamin could say anything else, Miranda had marched off to start a war.
16
Captive
Miranda felt like crying, but that wouldn’t solve anything. Instead, she found a net in the biology department. From the glance she had gotten of Cuttlefur before the screen had broken, it looked like he was headed for the library. No matter, because he had arranged to meet her on the clifftop an hour before lunch for a quiet nature walk.
Wilhelm and Benjamin were her two closest friends, the only two people she considered true friends here in Endinfinium, and they had both betrayed her. And while she might eventually forgive Benjamin for being an accomplice, Wilhelm would forevermore be an enemy. Some things you just didn’t do to your friends, and one of those was spy on them.
While technically forbidden to go outside the school buildings after dark, during the daytime on weekends, most of the cliffs and a couple of miles inland were considered safe enough for pupils to wander as they pleased, provided they appeared at mealtimes. Benjamin had been Miranda’s regular walking companion until the day they had found Cuttlefur, though now it was clear his loyalties lay with Wilhelm. Even if she hadn’t been desperate to punish her former friend for spying on her, she was growing tired of their childishness. Cuttlefur was so much more mature.
He waited by a scraggly tree in a hollow near the cliff edge. A few exposed rocks made crude seats, where he sat on one, staring at the ground, twisting a lock of his blue hair around in his fingers.
‘I’m sorry I’m late,’ she gasped. ‘I had a few, um, issues to take care of.’
Cuttlefur smiled, and as always, she wanted to melt. ‘I was just enjoying the day,’ he said. ‘It’s a lot nicer than living in an institution, isn’t it? You know that, when you go back, you’ll never return there, don’t you? We’ll be going to proper homes with proper families. You’ll have a real mum and dad.’
She hadn’t even sat down yet, but her stored up anger was immediately replaced by the dreams he was telling her. What would it be like to have a real family? Benjamin had told her about his. Someone to comfort you when you were sad, to cheer you on when something good happened … she couldn’t wait.
‘You’ll get your own bedroom,’ Cuttlefur said. ‘And I don’t mean like one of the dorms here, where you have to share with someone. One of your very own. You’ll be able to decorate it how you want, put up posters on the wall—all sorts of things.’
His hand had already taken hers, and she shifted just a little closer, envisioning the warmth if they touched each other. With their clothes on, of course—but maybe if it was a little chilly, he might put his arm around her to protect her from the cold—
‘If we go back, will we still see each other?’
Cuttlefur smiled again. ‘Of course. We’ll be living in the same part of town. We can walk to school together, if you like.’
‘We’ll still be going to school?’
‘Sure. But, you know, a regular school. There won’t be any lessons about objects coming back to life or anything like that.’
Miranda shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t miss it.’
And as she said it, she wasn’t sure she would. Even here in Endinfinium, being a Channeler had made her feel like a freak. Until the Dark Man’s attack on the school, the teachers had denied all knowledge of the reanimation magic that permeated the very fabric of this world, and Miranda had been forced to seek guidance from Edgar Caspian, a once-exiled professor. Even now that reanimation magic had been accepted—grudgingly, she was sure—and Edgar had been restored to a teaching position, she remembered how much of an outcast she had felt.
With her glowing red hair marking her out as not just diverse but also completely different, she knew she hadn’t quite shaken off her outcast label.
Benjamin and Wilhelm had accepted her. Benjamin and Wilhelm—
A glittering thing in the sky just beyond Cuttlefur’s shoulder brought her old anger gatecrashing back. Didn’t matter that Cuttlefur hadn’t even asked why she had a net with her; she just leapt to her feet and pushed past him, swinging the net with all her might to snare the fluttering thing hovering just over their heads.
Scowling, Miranda hauled in the net and examined the little creature caught up inside.
‘What is it?’ Cuttlefur said.
‘A Scatlock. They’re made out of reanimated plastic carrier bags. They roost in crags on the cliff-face, and they’re most active at night. You really don’t want one getting into the dorms, or they might leave a crack big enough for others to follow.’
‘That’s why we wear those capes to cross over, isn’t it?’
Miranda nodded. ‘They’re horrible little things. And this one is the most horrible of all.’
She reached through the netting to take hold of the tiny camera tied around the part of the Scatlock she guessed was the neck.
‘It’s disgusting,’ Cuttlefur said. ‘Kill it.’
His tone had hardened, and Miranda’s fingers tensed, ready to rip the thing in two. After all, it was only a plastic bag. Endinfinium’s reanimation magic might make it act like it was alive, but it was on borrowed time.
The Scatlock gave a little squeak. Miranda paused.
‘I … can’t.’
‘Why not? Give it here. I’ll do it.’
Cuttlefur reached for it, but Miranda pulled it away. She felt a sudden urge to use her magic, but reined it in before the feeling overwhelmed her.
‘Don’t.’
‘What’s the matter? It’s a silly little plastic bag.’
‘It’s no sillier than we are. We were made in a lab, too, remember?’
Cuttlefur smiled. ‘Oh, I see. You’re feeling that sense of being, aren’t you? Everything deserves life, especially when none of us deserve it?’
She shrugged. ‘I can’t just kill it.’
‘What’s it doing here? Why isn’t it roosting with its plastic bag friends?’
Miranda cradled the little Scatlock in her hands. ‘Rick,’ she said, and the Scatlock rustled. Miranda looked up at Cuttlefur. ‘Wilhelm sent it to spy on us.’ She opened her hand to reveal the little camera tied around Rick’s neck.
Cuttlefur looked about to say something harsh, but then, as if catching himself, he smiled again. ‘Perhaps you shouldn’t spend so much time with me,’ he said. ‘Your little friend is jealous. Why else would he attack me in the science block and then send this creature to spy on me? Perhaps we shouldn’t hang around for a
while.’
‘No!’
Her surge of guilt and sadness faded, replaced by the old anger. ‘He can’t just spy on you. I need to teach him a lesson.’
‘How?’
‘This is his pet, right? He called it Rick. Well, now it’s my pet. And he can’t have it back until he’s proven to me—and to you—that he’s grown up and changed his attitude.’
Cuttlefur grinned, resting his hand over hers, and their connection—briefly tenuous—was restored.
‘Sounds like a great idea,’ he said.
17
Punishment
Benjamin felt like an idiot. Assembled on the floor of the Great Hall below, everyone in the school—teachers, pupils, and even some of the cleaners with their vacant eyes and dopey grins—stood watching his and Wilhelm’s ritual humiliation.
‘Shh!’ Captain Roche hissed, stilling a group of third-year boys who couldn’t stop sniggering behind their hands. Standing at the back, Gubbledon Longface gave a comical snort that only set them off again, while beside him, the sin keeper—having made a rare appearance outside of the Locker Room—gave a rustle of armour that could have meant anything.
The biggest disappointment for Benjamin was that Grand Lord Bastien—perhaps the only teacher on his side—hadn’t shown up. Since Benjamin and his friends had freed him from the Dark Man’s clutches, he had been noticeable by his absence from public view. Apart from a brief appearance at a ceremony marking the beginning of the second term, no one had seen him. Benjamin had grilled Edgar, but his friend’s only response was that the Grand Lord liked his contemplation time, and that he didn’t consider the days’ passing with the same urgency as they did.
Now, with the exception of Edgar, who wore an amused smirk, the rest of the senior teachers—Professor Loane, Captain Roche, Ms. Ito, and Professor Eaves—glowered at them from the side of the stage.