by J. R. Wallis
‘I’m not some spanner in a toolbox,’ grunted Ruby, as Jones walked out of the kitchen. ‘Or even a screwdriver for that matter.’ But he chose to ignore her.
Maitland’s study was a mess, with papers and books littering the floor. When Jones started tidying up, Ruby decided she had no choice but to stick close and help, in case Victor Brynn returned. It had only taken her a few moments to ask The Black Book of Magical Instruction how to cancel the spell on the No-Thing and cast a new one to make him disappear for a thousand years. Grudgingly, she had to admit it was a good plan. But there was no way she was going to tell Jones that.
They worked in silence, refilling the bookshelves, collecting all the papers, and righting furniture. Ruby was given the awful job of peeling the imps off the floor. Their bodies crackled as they came free and left bright, clean patches behind.
She burnt the corpses in an incinerator in the garden, an old metal bin with holes drilled around the bottom. Ruby whispered ‘sorry’ as the imps burnt and smoke curled up out of the funnel in the centre of the incinerator’s lid. But the word sounded useless despite the way she felt. It made her understand why saying ‘sorry’ to Jones for all she’d done, however much she meant it, wasn’t going to make any difference either. She had no way of changing what had happened to him at all. And it made her realize what a terrible thing she had done to him and why he was so upset.
The two children stayed within sight or earshot of each other all day, waiting for a chance to use magic on Victor Brynn or cancel the spell on the axe should they materialize. But, as the hours ticked by, there was no sign of either. The only real excitement came when Ruby opened a door in the hallway, causing a mop to fall out of what was in fact a cupboard. She’d screamed so hard Jones had come running down the hallway from the bottom of the stairs where he’d been fixing a particularly annoying piece of carpet that had been loose for some time.
But he’d stopped as soon as he’d seen Ruby battling with the mop, its smelly white strands whirling round her head, before she threw it to the floor.
‘Ruby Jenkins, the great Badlander,’ he announced, picking up the mop. ‘She sorted you out, didn’t she? Ordinary people’ll sleep safer in their beds from now on for sure.’ Jones propped the mop against the wall inside the cupboard, and walked back to the bottom of the stairs without another word. To Ruby it looked like he was floating on air.
‘I’m going to be a Badlander, Jones,’ she said, rearranging her hair.
‘Yeah? And how’s that gonna happen again, exactly?’ But Ruby didn’t know, so she couldn’t say. She banged the cupboard door shut as hard as she could instead. ‘I know,’ said Jones brightly. ‘Maybe the gifts’ll help.’
‘What gifts?’ asked Ruby, still trying to adjust the kinks in her hair.
‘Oh, I s’pose you wouldn’t know,’ said Jones, sounding like he was talking to a little kid. ‘There’s always gifts for an apprentice after they’ve Commenced. I could show you how to use them, if you like? If you think that’d be useful?’
Ruby walked down the hallway and stared into his eyes. She was ever so slightly taller than him. She curled the fingers of one hand into her palm until she felt her fingernails and the words she wanted came out.
‘You know what, Jones, I’d really love that. Thank you.’
When Jones opened the door and showed her into the room with a sweeping bow, Ruby knew he was enjoying making her feel uncomfortable. That he was trying to make it seem as though she was out of her depth in a world she knew very little about. But all the same she wanted to know more about the gifts he’d mentioned so she chose to ignore his manner as best she could.
Jones pointed to the spot below the windowsill where the large oak chest had been. In its place now was another smaller chest, of about half the size. Propped up on top of it was an envelope with Jones’s name written on the front. After ripping it open, he read the note and then gave it to Ruby.
‘It’s pronounced “weird”, by the way.’
‘What is?’
‘The word you won’t recognize,’ said Jones, tapping the page. ‘It’s Anglo-Saxon for “fate” or “how things are supposed to be”.’ And Ruby nodded as she started to read . . .
Dear Jones
If this letter has appeared, two things have happened. Firstly, you have carried out your duty to Commence. Secondly, I am no longer in the world and am therefore unable to continue your education. I know you will accept the way the wyrd has worked for me, but please know I am truly sorry not to be able to congratulate you on your Commencement in person. You have been like a son to me and for that I have been truly grateful.
There is so much still to learn. I hope the objects in this chest prove useful as you grow older and become the great Badlander I know you can be. Jones, my boy, of the few apprentices I have tutored you are the only one to have made it to Commencement, and I am sure you will have many apprentices of your own who will carry on both our legacies. Let us hope the wyrd is good to you and that you live long, well and successfully. You are a wonderful and talented boy and I foresee a great future for you.
Two words of advice. Always respect the Ordnung. And most of all be safe, my boy.
Maitland
‘No one’s ever written me a letter like that,’ said Ruby as she folded it up. But Jones didn’t seem to hear as he flipped up the lid of the chest. ‘Didn’t you hear me?’ asked Ruby, waggling the letter.
‘Yes.’
‘Doesn’t it make you the least bit upset that Maitland’s gone?’
Jones bit the inside of his cheek. ‘I was upset till I found out he stole me. But then that changed everything, didn’t it?’
Ruby shrugged as she folded the letter. ‘If you say so. But it seems like he loved you very much.’ Jones stared at her and heard something crackle in his throat as he swallowed and tried not to think about Maitland at all. It was confusing to know exactly what to feel after reading the letter. He coughed and slapped his hands together as if to clear all the thinking inside him, and peered into the chest.
‘Right, what have you got in here?’ He pulled out a jar with a thin brown worm coiled up asleep inside. ‘A Door Wurm. Nice! Do you know what that does?’ He beamed at Ruby, but she just stared back at him. ‘Oh and look,’ he said, picking up a small bottle containing a fine black dust with a cork bung wedged in the top. ‘I bet you know how Slap Dust works too. It’s very useful if you’re in a fix of course. And look! It’s good stuff too, from Deschamps & Sons,’ and he made a great show of pointing to the name and logo engraved on the front of the bottle. ‘Very nice.’ Ruby bit her tongue as Jones gave her the bottle so he could pick up a mirror. He whistled and shook his head as he inspected it. The mirror was about the size of a dinner plate, framed in black ivory. ‘Blimey, a scrying mirror, and look, polish too!’ and he pointed to a tin with words written on it in elaborate font that read:
As Jones clutched the mirror to his chest and reached in for something else, Ruby put the bottle of Slap Dust down and tipped the lid of the chest up and over. It shut with a loud bang, almost trapping Jones’s fingers as he whipped back his arm.
‘You’ve made your point, Jones,’ said Ruby. ‘Thank you.’
And then she turned round and walked out of the room.
Neither of them spoke much after that, not when they ate or washed up afterwards. And not when they took it in turns to go to the loo with the other one standing outside the bathroom, waiting in awkward silence just in case Victor Brynn appeared.
Ruby quickly realized how quiet the house was. There was no television. No hum of a computer screen or the chime of email. In fact, there was nothing to remind her she was in the twenty-first century at all except for the clothes she was wearing. She’d left her mobile phone at her foster parents’ house after deciding the police might be able to find her by tracing the phone because she’d seen something like it happen in a movie once. She regretted it now, wishing she could play some music or watch something.
/> In the end, the quiet was so loud, Ruby resorted to asking the gun questions about how everything worked. Clearly, the house was not wired for electricity given what she’d seen with the lights and the vacuum cleaner, and the stove in the kitchen was wood-fired. But there was running water. So were there bills for that? And what about all the other bills that usually came with houses? Did Badlanders have money? What if someone came to the house? Wouldn’t they realize it was all a bit strange and start asking questions? Didn’t Badlanders have to go to the doctor? The dentist? Was everything solved with magic and charms?
The revolver didn’t seem to know specifics, but assured her everything was covered. ‘The Badlander Order’s been around for centuries,’ it said. ‘It’ll last for centuries more, whatever happens in the world it’s sworn to protect. Badlanders work things out. They use magic. They adapt.’
‘Not to girls, apparently,’ said Ruby.
Jones listened to all her questions, but didn’t say a word. As the day had gone on, he’d become better and better at ignoring Ruby until it seemed to her that Jones had no idea she even existed. And it was then that she decided to slip away to make him at least say something to her even if it was to ask where she was going.
But, as she left him in the kitchen while he was making himself a cup of tea, Jones didn’t make a squeak. Nor when she went down the hall. And not even when she went up the stairs.
With each footstep, Ruby hoped Victor Brynn would appear beside Jones, forcing him to scream out her name so she’d have to come running. But that didn’t happen and she found herself walking into the room furthest away from the kitchen, which happened to be Jones’s bedroom. She sat down on the bed and waited for him to follow her. But there was no sign of Jones.
She sighed and took the gun out of her waistband.
‘How long’s he going to stay like this?’
‘Who knows? He can be a moody boy. Why Maitland kept him on as his apprentice, I’ll never know. He didn’t Commence any of the others he trained. The two that didn’t die in the Badlands had their minds charmed to forget everything, because they had no potential, and were given back to ordinary people to look after. Maitland must have seen something in Jones, though, because it was obvious he wasn’t keen on being a Badlander once he started growing up. Just look at the wall, above the bed.’
Ruby looked up and realized it was covered with postcards arranged in neat rows. She hadn’t noticed them when she’d sat down, too self-absorbed and angry at Jones. Neither had she clocked them earlier in the frenzy of the Commencement.
‘The boy’s written on each one. Read the one right at the top, at the start of the first row,’ said the gun. ‘It’s got a picture of a rowing boat on it.’
Ruby stood on the small chair beside the bed, and reached up and just managed to peel the postcard off the wall. Turning it over, she saw a stamp had been drawn in the top right corner where a real one might have been stuck down. It showed a palm tree on a beach, and had been heavily marked with wavy pencil lines to make it appear as though it had been franked. The single line of address read:
To Jones
The message opposite was written in the same clipped and tidy writing.
Dear Jones
We told Maitland not to tell you until we wrote our first card but we are your parents. We are on a very long holiday we won in a magazine. We could not take you with us because of the rules in the competition so we decided to leave you with Maitland who we know and trust. We have told him not to tell you about us because we wanted it to be a surprise. Now that we know you are old enough to read we will send you postcards about all the things we are doing and where we are. Take care and do what Maitland tells you. I hope this is all a nice surprise for you!
Lots of love Mum and Dad xx
After Ruby had finished reading she tacked the postcard back on the wall and stepped down off the chair. She reckoned there were about a hundred postcards.
‘How long’s he been writing them?’ she asked.
‘Long enough to make up a whole story,’ replied the gun. ‘Maitland said it wouldn’t do any harm. But I told him it would lead to trouble. Jones is a strange boy.’
But Ruby just smiled and shook her head. ‘No, he’s not. He’s just like me.’
‘What on earth do you mean?’
‘If I pasted all the pages from my diaries around this bedroom, there’d be no wall left at all. Neither of us got the lives we wanted so we had to deal with it somehow. I know exactly why he’s done this.’
Hearing a noise behind her, she turned round to see Jones standing there. But, instead of saying something sarcastic or complaining about her being in his bedroom, all he did was nod at her and some of the tension in the room seemed to melt away.
When it was time to go to bed, Jones decided they should stay in the same bedroom and showed Ruby a spare room with two single beds. He sat down in the armchair in the corner, wrapping himself in a blanket, assuring Ruby he would wake her up in a few hours when it was her turn to keep watch.
They’d brought the walnut box for the gun from the study and it lay on the bedside table next to Ruby, just in case. Gentle snores came from within as the gun slept soundly. Ruby took longer to drop off, and Jones listened carefully to her breathing as she tossed and turned, waiting for her to fall asleep.
As soon as Jones heard Ruby sleeping, he got up quietly out of the armchair. After leaving two cushions under the blanket, he crept out of the bedroom and went downstairs to the room where the chest full of Maitland’s gifts was still sitting under the window. Picking out the bottle of black Slap Dust, he weighed it in his hand. Ever since he’d shown it to Ruby, the idea of using it had steadily been burning a hole in his head. He pulled out the stopper and sprinkled a little bit of the black powder into the palm of his other hand. Careful not to drop any, he pushed the stopper back into the bottle, and put it in his overcoat pocket.
He licked his lips. His mouth was dry, making it hard to swallow.
‘Take me to Chesterford Gardens,’ he managed to say. ‘It’s in Hampstead. London.’ And then he slapped his hands together as hard as he could and the Slap Dust crackled and burnt just like he knew it would.
TWELVE
If anyone had been standing at one end of Chesterford Gardens, at about midnight, they would have seen a boy appear out of thin air and go flying along the pavement on his tiptoes, arms flailing. And they would have probably winced too, as he crashed into a pile of black bags left out for the rubbish collection, bursting one of them, and sending up a cloud of dust that settled on him like dirty snow. But luckily there seemed to be no one around to witness Jones’s arrival in London.
His palms felt like they were burning and he blew on them to try and cool them down. He hadn’t anticipated quite how generous Maitland had been with the Slap Dust. It was, undoubtedly, the very best and most expensive mixture one could buy from Deschamps & Sons. Jones made a mental note to use much less of it on the return journey after checking the bottle was still intact in his pocket.
He brushed himself down, pulling a potato peeling from his hair, but gave up trying to smooth down all the unruly kinks he could find, reassuring himself it didn’t matter how he looked. He was only here to try and locate the house Maitland had taken him from as a starting point to find his parents. If, by some remote chance, his mum and dad were actually still living there, he wouldn’t be introducing himself tonight. How could he, until he and Ruby had sorted everything out? Until the spell was fixed and Victor Brynn was banished, all Jones would be able to do would be observe his parents and find out all he could about them. He knew the fæcce Maitland had put in the cot to replace him would have died many years ago, but maybe he had brothers or sisters. Jones wasn’t sure what to expect. For now, it was just like being on any other Badlander hunt. He needed to be patient, logical and, above all, prepared for anything.
He began walking down the street, assessing one side. A long row of houses were set back from the
road, with tiny gardens at the front, most of them full of rubbish, plastic bags and broken glass. Realizing all the houses on this side of the street were abandoned, Jones walked on to the end of the road, where it ended in a junction, and then crossed over and began walking back the other way.
On the other side, the houses were in much better condition, with people clearly still living in them, the curtains drawn and the flicker from televisions dancing madly round their edges. Jones scrutinized each house carefully. And then he stopped. The house in front of him looked vaguely familiar, like a button had been pressed in just the right section of his brain.
He stared at it, taking in the front door, the windows and the little garden bisected by the concrete path, trying to recall all the details he’d remembered after eating the memory fruit. But it was impossible to remember if it really was the same one Maitland had taken him from. He had no childhood memories to call on either.
Suddenly, the front door opened, as if Jones had disturbed whoever was inside. Embarrassed to be caught watching, Jones walked on quickly, and then glanced back. The woman he saw looked older. Her hair was shorter too. But it was definitely her.
It was his mother.
She was still living here, in the same house, after all this time. Jones felt his heart hammering harder and harder inside his chest as different voices clamoured inside his head, trying to tell him what he should do next.
When Ruby woke up, she saw the dark outline of a body curled up under the blanket in the armchair on the far side of the room.
‘Jones?’
She decided he must have fallen asleep and was about to shout louder to wake him up when another thought clicked through the gears in her brain, telling her not to. Instead, she sat up as quietly as she could, then slipped her feet onto the floor.