Blackfoot

by W. R. Gingell

  Very well, said Blackfoot, though he sounded dissatisfied. Just don’t make a habit of it.

  “I have enough fat to live on, anyway. Maybe I’ll get a waist after this.”

  Blackfoot made an impatient noise. You shouldn’t listen to that dreadful boy. There’s nothing wrong with how you look.

  “He doesn’t mean anything by it,” Annabel said. “He just doesn’t think about things before he says them. It’s why he’s always getting into fights at school.”

  Just because you don’t mind, Nan– oh, never mind. I trust you know where you’re going?

  Annabel said cautiously, “Sort of. Things are still moving around, but bits of it are in the same order as yesterday: it’s big chunks that are moving instead of little bits, now. And this part is just below the hallway we want. We just need to go up the next stairway we come to.”

  Well done, Nan! said Blackfoot. He sounded mildly surprised, which would have annoyed Annabel if she wasn’t feeling just the tiniest bit smug. We’ll take this stairway, in that case.

  “It’s as if two people are moving bits and pieces in the castle,” Annabel said, climbing stairs more energetically than was normal. “Someone was moving little bits and pieces yesterday, and now someone else is moving big segments. It all makes a puzzly kind of sense.”

  I’m glad you think so.

  “Hah!” said Annabel in satisfaction, as they reached the top step of the stone stairway. “See?”

  I see a corridor. There’s no indication that it’s the corridor we want.

  “Pft!” Annabel said at him, and continued on around the corner. There she stopped, her breath catching in her throat. She’d already known what she would see, but it was still something of a shock to see it again, after so long looking for it.

  The whole corridor was still gone, of course. Perhaps the thing that took away her breath was the way it was missing: it was so solidly gone, as if it had never appeared again. Almost as if…almost as if the castle itself had broken off a part of the hall and taken Peter away to that when in the past where there was still a whole castle that fit together.

  Annabel clutched at the satchel strap with hands that were slightly damp. She had already suspected something of this, and she was really quite certain she could draw Peter back in if that was the case. But was really quite certain enough when it came to Peter’s safety?

  “What if it’s the castle that’s taken him away?”

  What if it is?

  “Well,” Annabel said, surprised, “why? Why would it take him away?”

  I can perfectly understand wanting to be rid of the boy, remarked Blackfoot. In fact, I should imagine it’s a pretty common reaction when it comes to Peter. I’m constantly wondering at your staunch determination to have him back, in fact.

  Annabel made a face at him, but she was feeling more cheerful, despite her damp hands. The castle– no, she would think about the castle and its machinations later. For now, it was Peter she needed to think about.

  “I started drawing Peter a couple of days ago,” she said slowly, despite that. The same thought had been teasing her all morning, behind everything else. “But Blackfoot, if I’m drawing the castle back, and things back, how? I mean, I know the pencil is doing it, but where do the ideas come from? Is the pencil putting them in my head? I don’t want something else in my head!”

  Nan, breathe. I don’t know how it works any more than you do. Consider this: do you want to rescue Peter?

  “Of course I do!”

  Then, for the moment, does it really matter where the ideas come from?

  “No,” said Annabel, sniffing. She had just told herself the same thing, after all. “But once we have Peter back, I don’t want this thing in my head any more.”

  We’ll talk about that once you’ve drawn him back here, promised Blackfoot.

  “All right,” said Annabel, and sat down by the ragged gap in the floor. She flicked through sketchbook pages until she found the drawing of Peter she’d begun but not finished. It was just as she’d left it, a small, incomplete thing that showed Peter with his head bent over a desk cluttered with tickerbox parts, and she’d only sketched in a bit of the room. Now she finished it, right up to the walls, with careful, painstaking lines: here a little perspective to the walls, there the outside hall that had disappeared. She saw the hall as it appeared in front of her, a blurry certainty ahead of her that she couldn’t focus on just now. Instead, she concentrated on the drawing, making the shadows and lines on the paper version of Peter as correctly defined as she could manage. She covered every bit of the paper, shading here and there; and when that was done, and Blackfoot said critically in the back of her mind: You haven’t drawn the door, she said: “I know. That’s the last bit. Just in case.”

  Annabel sat and scanned her drawing for far longer than she’d spent sketching it, her eyes stinging and watering as she searched for any tiny mistake that could ruin the inexplicable magic. Then, at last, she took up her pencil nub one last time, and drew in a door.

  11

  She had known it would work. She had been almost certain. Well, she had been reasonably sure of it.

  But it was one thing to be quite sure of it: it was another to see the door appearing in the wall as she drew it. At first it was all rough lines and flatness, but as she shaded in the depth to it, it solidified in the castle. Still, it wasn’t until Annabel’s fingers were around the doorknob and it was turning, that she was able to feel that she really had known it would work, despite the hallway that reappeared before her.

  The door opened quietly; almost anticlimactically. There was the boarded floor, just as she’d drawn it, and there were the books on the shelves. There was the table, littered with cogs and pieces of metal, there– there was Peter, his sleeves rolled up above the elbow but still stained with grease, and there was the preoccupied frown she had drawn much earlier.

  Something that had been tightly wrapped around Annabel’s heart loosened. She let the doorknob slip from her fingers without realising it, and the door slowly came to rest against the wall with a soft tap. At the sound, Peter looked up briefly. “Oh. Hallo, Ann. Hold this, please.”

  “Peter? Are you all right?”

  “Of course I’m all right,” Peter said irritably. “No, hold it, Ann!”

  “But–”

  “And this bit as well.”

  Annabel, bewildered, found herself holding a thin piece of metal in one hand and a metal plate in the other. From the thin piece of metal, a wire ran, joining it to the metal plate, and the metal plate was attached to a rather more scattered version of one of Peter’s tickerboxes. It was open to the light, its insides ticking and whirring, and when Annabel moved unwarily, snapping the wire that joined the metal rod to the metal plate, it slowed, stopped, and then started up again, this time faster.

  She froze, expecting Peter to expostulate, but he only said: “Oh, well. Now that you’re here I don’t really need that wire, anyway. Don’t break the other bit, will you?”

  “Peter–”

  “Shh!” Peter said, watching his disembowelled tickerbox with bright interest. “Oh, just look at how fast it’s going now! Keep holding it, Ann!”

  “Why did it stop? Why is it going faster? Why is it doing that?”

  “It stopped because you broke the live connection,” said Peter. “And it started up again because you are the connection, now.”

  “I don’t want to be the connection!”

  “It’s too late for that. Don’t move.”

  “Peter!” Annabel released the metal plate and threw the rod down on the table. “I’ve been looking for you and I thought that you were dead, or that Mordion got you, and that I’d never see you again!”

  Peter, blinking, stared at her for a rather long time. Then he said: “Yes, but is that any reason to throw my things on the table? We could have gone back in time by a whole minute!”

  “What? I thought you didn’t believe in time travel! What do you mean, go bac
k in time? You should tell me before you do big magic like that!”

  “Yes, but Ann! It’s not magic! Not really: it’s clockwork, and energy, and I think there might be a bit of not-magic stuff in there, too. It doesn’t exist, but it’s there, and I need to find someone who understands about not-magic stuff that doesn’t exist. And when you get everything just right and the clockwork counts down properly, it keeps running in the background for as long as the tickerbox keeps running.”

  Annabel, her mouth open, found her voice again. “Have you been doing this the entire time you’ve been missing? Instead of trying to get back?”

  “Not all the time,” protested Peter. “I had a bit of a look around when I first got here, but I got sent back in time, Ann! What would you have done?”

  “Did you even leave this level?”

  “Why should I?” Peter demanded. “There were people out there! I didn’t want them to see me: they’d know at once that I didn’t belong. I stayed here and put a Don’t See spell on the door while I worked on the new tickerbox. Besides, I did leave. Well, for a bit, anyway: I went down to the kitchen and took some pies after everyone else left. Oh, and I found the pieces for this tickerbox in the court wizard’s rooms.”

  “Were you trying to get back at all?”

  “What? No! Why should I? I knew you’d find your way to me sooner or later: I just wanted to get some work done in peace and quiet. I did think about trying to send you a message, but then I got caught up with altering the new tickerbox.”

  “I should just leave you here!” Annabel said, bad-temperedly. “You can find your way back when you figure out your stupid little tickerbox!”

  Peter caught at her arm. “Don’t be like that, Ann! I would have come back, but there was so much to see here! Do you know, I saw the start of the Great Battle from this window? Someone moved it– moved it, Ann! They picked up the whole battlefield and just moved it.”

  “You’ve never cared about history anyway,” grumbled Annabel.

  “Yes, but it’s different when it’s happening right around you! And it’s different when there’s big magic going on just within reach, too. Oh! Where’s your cat?”

  “He’s back in the hallway,” said Annabel. “I told him to stay there, just in case we couldn’t get back, or something went wrong. Wait! You were the one who took the pies! You took them out before, so they didn’t make it to the now!”

  “Technically speaking, the pies were never there in the first place,” said Peter, his voice just slightly lecturing. “Technically speaking, your memories of them are simply a hiccough in the reordering of time.”

  “Technically speaking!” muttered Annabel in disgust. “There is no technically speaking! Nobody knows about the technical side of time-travel. You didn’t even believe in–”

  “All right, all right. Maybe I didn’t. And maybe it’s time that someone did know about the technical side of time-travel, and why shouldn’t it be me?”

  “Then find out about it back in your own time. Blackfoot and I have been looking for you for ages.”

  “But it’s so messy back there. Mordion isn’t causing trouble here.”

  “I wouldn’t be too sure about that.” Annabel looked gloomily around the room. “Blackfoot told me a few things about him. If there’s big magic going on out there, I bet he’s involved, somehow.”

  Peter stared at her. “You shouldn’t listen to that cat of yours, Ann. That would mean he’s–”

  “Hundreds of years old. Yes. That’s what Blackfoot says. Anyway, the castle is getting dangerous now that Mordion got in, and a lot of the doorways don’t go where they should go. I need you back in our now so that I don’t walk through any of the wrong ones.”

  “Wait up, Mordion is in the castle?” Peter said sharply. “How did that happen?”

  “He gave proof of value, too,” Annabel said. “He showed the castle how to move itself around, and now that he’s in, he keeps shifting things to trick us into going the wrong way. Actually, I think the castle might be doing some of the things itself: I just haven’t figured out why.”

  Peter laughed rudely. “I bet you haven’t! You don’t pay attention, Ann!”

  “At least I’m trying. You’ve been sitting in here without doing anything!”

  “I was working! I’ve been breaking the secrets of clockwork-assisted time-travel!”

  “Nobody cares about that!”

  “I care about it!”

  I suppose, said Blackfoot’s voice, I suppose it would be too much to expect that you could continue your quarrel back in your own present?

  “Now Blackfoot is being snide again,” Annabel said in annoyance. She looked around at the open door and saw Blackfoot sitting there, very carefully on his own side of the doorway. “He says we should go back now.”

  Peter shrugged, but began to pack his things. “What’s the difference? I thought you said he was always snide.”

  “Yes, but he’s usually being snide about you. No! I’m not going to carry your stupid tickerbox! Stop getting grease all over me!”

  “Fine!” Peter said, stuffing random cogs and wheels into his pockets and pinching tiny metal spindles between his lips. He made a series of muffled noises through the metal in his lips that made Annabel giggle despite herself, and wrapped even more grease-smeared metal into a piece of cloth that she strongly suspected had been torn from one of his sleeves. Once that was done, he took the spindles out of his mouth and thrust the cloth-wrapped bundle at her. “Then hold this!”

  Annabel took it from him and led the way out of the room, still giggling, because even if Peter was just as annoying and frustrating as usual, at least he was there to be annoying and frustrating.

  “You’re in a silly mood today,” Peter said disapprovingly, but he sounded less cross than he had before, and he followed her without wasting any more time.

  That took far too long, Blackfoot said, when they were both out. However, interestingly enough, you seem to have pulled the room and the hall back into the castle properly as you came out. I was afraid that you might have only drawn yourself into the past, but as far as I can see, the whole section has stabilised.

  “Good,” Annabel said, in satisfaction. “I thought I’d only drawn myself into the past, too.”

  Peter shot her a narrow look. “What do you mean, draw yourself? What are you talking about.”

  “Nothing,” said Annabel loftily. “I just rescued you by drawing you back from the past, that’s all! Just sat there and drew you, and the room, and brought you back. Nothing at all.”

  “Drew me–” Peter stared at her. “You drew me back from the past? We’re back in the present? Why didn’t I feel anything? And how on earth did you do it? You can’t do magic– you don’t even have magic!”

  “That’s right!” Annabel said happily. “But I did, actually. Look out the window.”

  Peter gave her one last, incredulous stare, and rushed over to the nearest window while Blackfoot made his little hui hui hui in the recesses of Annabel’s mind.

  Annabel hugged herself, grinning, and said: “This is more fun than I thought it would be.”

  “How, Ann?” demanded Peter, leaning dangerously far out of the window and then back in like a jack-in-the-box. “How did you do it? I can’t even see the orangey glow from the Frozen Battlefield anymore.”

  “It’s not me, exactly,” Annabel admitted reluctantly. “It’s this pencil. I didn’t realise it until last night, but every time I drew something from the castle, it was bringing whatever I drew back to the castle.”

  “Oh.” Peter thought about that for a little while, and said at last: “Well, I suppose that makes sense. You did find the pencil in the ruins, after all. My question would be why it didn’t start working until now, but I probably know the answer to that as well.”

  “What answer?” demanded Annabel.

  “Never you mind!” Peter said impressively, and though she pestered him for answers all the way back down to the throne roo
m, he refused to answer in any other way than: “Don’t think I’m supposed to tell you, actually.”

  At last Annabel stopped asking him, muttering to Blackfoot: “He probably doesn’t know anything. He just wants to sound clever because he wasn’t the one who got himself out of the past.”

  I warned you it was a bad idea to rescue him, said Blackfoot. You can put up with the consequences.

  Peter merely smirked at her and went back to his tickerbox. That was annoying, since it meant he really did know something. Annabel, pretending she didn’t care, wondered aloud what she should try to draw back next, by way of trying to annoy Peter with the remembrance that she and not he had effected the changes upon the castle. It was a fortunate change of subject: Peter took it up with great enthusiasm and chivvied Annabel and Blackfoot outside the castle again to look up at the structure as a whole.

  “There,” he said, pointing. “There are still bits missing. Draw those back. I want to see it happen.”

  It won’t do him any good, Blackfoot said, with amusement colouring his voice. There’s nothing to see, magically speaking. It’s possibly the strongest magic I’ve ever not seen working. Do go ahead, though, by all means. I’m looking forward to seeing the crestfallen expression on his face.

  Annabel grinned, which made Peter look rather more narrowly at her, and took her pencil and sketchbook out of her satchel. She could already see what she was going to draw, which would have been worrisome if it wasn’t exactly what she was used to feeling when she went to draw something, even before this particular pencil and this particular time.

  “I still want to know,” she said, to the world in general rather than to Peter or Blackfoot in particular, “how I get the ideas. It doesn’t feel like there’s someone else in my head like when Blackfoot speaks, so is the pencil speaking to me, or is it just working with whatever I do?”

  “I suppose it depends on whether it’s actually a pencil or not,” said Peter. “Hurry up and draw something, Ann!”

  Annabel looked at him in surprise, the point of her pencil nub just touching the paper. “Well, what else would it be? Blackfoot says he can’t see anything unusual about it.”