by Garth Nix
‘You didn’t hear me,’ replied Grandma X firmly. She looked around carefully, and added, ‘It must have been someone else.’
She climbed inside the car and firmly shut the door behind her.
‘Straight home, both of you,’ she ordered through the open window. ‘I’ll be right behind you all the way, so don’t even think about taking any short cuts.’
With that, she reversed the Hillman back about twenty yards, its headlights fully illuminating the twins, as if she might confine them within the light.
Jaide ground her teeth together. Trying to get Grandma X to admit that she was wrong was like arguing with a brick wall. They’d definitely heard someone, and there was no one else around. It must have been Grandma X.
‘Come on,’ Jack said quietly. ‘She’s right about getting home. If Mum gets mad, she might take the bikes away. Or something even worse.’
‘All right.’ Jaide climbed on and kicked the pedals into motion. ‘But there’s something going on here – I just know it.’
‘I know it too. Did you see those tracks back there? They were huge!’
Jack was thinking of tracks he’d seen once on a beach while on holiday. His father had explained how, when the moon was right, sea turtles dragged themselves out of the water to lay their eggs in the sand.
‘I reckon the monster was right here, tonight.’
Behind them the Hillman Minx crept forward, like a sheepdog beginning to drive a flock. Jaide looked over her shoulder, scowled and then pushed off. As they rode away, she half turned to Jack and muttered, ‘She said the monster doesn’t exist.’
‘No,’ replied Jack thoughtfully. ‘She didn’t actually say it doesn’t exist. She said something like she’d tell us if there was some kind of Evil monster creeping around.’
Jaide wrinkled her nose.
‘I wish she’d just give us a straight answer sometimes. Does that mean there is a monster?’
‘I don’t know. But I reckon Grandma doesn’t want us to go looking for one, either way.’
‘Secrets!’ spat Jaide. ‘There’s just too many of them in this town.’
They rode in silence for a moment, deep in thought.
‘What if there are different kinds of secrets?’ Jack said. ‘There are secrets like the wards, which we’ll learn about one day and which we know we have to avoid right now. We don’t know anything about them really, but we know they exist.’
‘Like there being other Wardens,’ said Jaide. ‘Or that Dad is in Venice, only we don’t know exactly what he’s doing.’
‘Yeah. And then there are the other kind of secrets – secrets we’re not allowed to even know exist. Because it’ll be bad for us, or we might make things worse . . . or maybe just because Grandma doesn’t trust us enough yet.’
‘Secret secrets?’
‘Secret secrets,’ Jack confirmed.
‘There might even be secret secret secrets,’ said Jaide. She tried to elbow Jack to emphasise the joke, and their bikes almost collided. A warning beep from the Hillman made them separate again and keep straight.
‘Secret squared secrets,’ said Jack, as they turned right on to Main Street.
‘Secrets to the power of secret,’ said Jaide, straight back.
‘Secret times infinity,’ said Jack.
The sun was completely down now, and the night still and cool. Stars were beginning to come out between a light scattering of cloud.
‘You know,’ said Jaide with new determination in her voice, ‘as well as not saying whether the monster exists or not, Grandma also never said we can’t look for it.’
‘I suppose not,’ replied Jack as they rode on to the drive of the house and had to suddenly grip their handlebars more tightly and focus on riding through the loose gravel. ‘So what do we do?’
‘If she won’t tell us more about the monster, we’ll just have to find someone who will.’
CHAPTER SIX
Dark Times Recalled
If Susan Shield detected any abnormal tension around the table that night, she said nothing about it. She had been out getting dinner when the twins had returned home on their bikes, and had therefore been none the wiser about their lateness. As they unwrapped the newspaper and divided up battered fillets and perfectly greasy chips, she asked them if they had enjoyed their bike ride, and they replied that they had.
‘The one and only time I came here while your father and I were dating,’ she said as they ate, ‘we went on a long bike ride to Scarborough and back. It took hours.’
‘Why didn’t you take the train?’ asked Jack.
‘I don’t know. Time didn’t seem to matter so much back then.’ Her eyes were focused on something far beyond the kitchen walls, and only with an effort did she force herself back to the real world. ‘There’s plenty of cobbler left, when you’ve finished.’
‘Thanks, Mum,’ said Jaide.
‘Yeah, awesome.’ Jack tried to smile, but he didn’t need a mirror to know it came out all wrong.
‘I suspect they’re still full from the cobbler they had before,’ said Grandma X, patting Susan’s hand. ‘They can take a piece each to school tomorrow in their lunch boxes.’
‘Perhaps we could give some to Mr Carver too,’ suggested Jaide with an innocent expression.
‘What a good idea.’ Grandma X smiled. ‘I’m sure he’d love that.’
After dinner, it was Jack and Jaide’s turn to do the dishes, but there was no sign of the mysterious soup pot and its thick green stains, just ordinary plates, cups and cutlery. Having done their homework and their chores, they would once have looked forward to watching some television, but Grandma X wouldn’t allow one in the house. Susan was using her laptop, so the twins had two options: play a board game or read.
‘Can we read the Compendium ?’ Jack asked Grandma X when Susan was distracted.
‘Of course,’ replied Grandma X. ‘A very good idea. Your mother is going back to work tomorrow, and we have much to do while she is gone.’
Grandma X ushered them up to their room, promising to return with the Compendium when she could.
‘Do you think we’ll find anything about the monster?’ Jack asked as they took the first turn on the stairs. ‘The Compendium never really does what we tell it to.’
That was one of the most annoying features of the Wardens’ repository of knowledge regarding The Evil. The trick was to think of what you most wanted to know, then open to a random page. Supposedly the Compendium would lead you straight to the information you needed. More often than not, though, the twins found themselves staring at recipes for exotic teas or methods of translating ancient entries into a language they could understand.
The only really useful thing they’d found was a way to quickly heal Jaide’s injured finger – which had been savaged by the Oracular Crocodile – but it still tingled at unexpected times. Her fingernail had also turned slightly silver, as if she’d painted it, and the colour could not be removed.
‘Well, maybe we’ve just been asking the wrong way,’ she said. ‘Or we haven’t needed to learn something badly enough.’
‘How do you think it tells the difference?’
‘I don’t know. We just have to concentrate harder, I think.’
They read ordinary books until Grandma X came in with the Compendium several minutes later.
‘Your mother will be up in an hour to turn off your lights,’ she said, putting it on the rug directly between them. ‘Make sure it’s out of sight by then, won’t you?’
They promised they would. Jack brought his quilt over to sit with Jaide in front of the Compendium. As always, he felt a tingle of anticipation before opening the enormous blue folder. Within lay all the secrets of the Wardens and their long fight against The Evil. Who knew what it would reveal to them this time?
‘Think of the monster,’ Jaide told him, remembering how Grandma X had helped her find Jack when he was lost in the sewers, by holding a clear picture of him in her mind. The trouble was, they
didn’t have a terribly clear picture of the monster to go on. ‘What do we know about it?’
‘It’s big,’ Jack said. ‘And it drags itself along.’
‘It might have shark’s teeth and an insect shell.’
‘And it might be hairy like a gorilla.’
‘It can’t be all those things at once,’ Jaide said. ‘Can it?’
‘Maybe that’s why they call it a monster.’
‘But there’s a word for that particular kind of monster, I think.’ She sighed. ‘Let’s just open it.’
They took one corner each to reveal what lay within the Compendium. There, on the page facing them, was the word chimera and a drawing of a creature with two heads, one that of a lion, the other a goat, and a snake-head for a tail.
‘Oh yeah,’ said Jaide. ‘That’s the word I was looking for. Chimera.’
Jack turned the page. There was a drawing of another chimerical beast, this time a part-eagle, part-lizard. ‘Do you think these are real?’
‘I don’t know. We’re not looking at photos after all. Someone could have just made these up for fun.’
‘We’re looking for real monsters,’ Jack told the Compendium. ‘Don’t show us anything that doesn’t exist.’
The next few pages contained images of mushroom clouds and dictators.
‘Ha ha,’ said Jaide, turning the pages faster. ‘Very funny. You know what we mean.’
‘Wait,’ said Jack, sticking his finger on to a photo before it could whizz by. ‘That looks like the Rock.’
‘What? Where?’
The page was a rather gory one about whalers – men in sailing ships who had slaughtered whales by their thousands in generations past. Dead centre on the page was a faded black-and-white photo of a tiny coastal town, featuring two ships moored at the mouth of a narrow harbour, with a huge whale carcass being winched up a kind of broad boat ramp, and a crowd of people standing around in awkward poses
‘There, see?’ said Jaide, pointing to the very right-hand edge of the photo. ‘That’s Mermaid Point.’
Jack squinted. ‘It is! But there’s no lighthouse or iron bridge. This must have been taken years ago!’
‘And there’s a clock tower, look. Isn’t that where Main Street runs now?’
‘I think you’re right.’ Jack peered even closer at the photo, straining to make out details from the ancient greys. ‘But how did they take this? I mean, it’s like an aerial photograph, but way before there were planes . . .’
He looked at Jaide. The same thought occurred to them.
‘A Warden took it,’ they said together. ‘A flying Warden!’
‘Must have been a better flier than me,’ added Jaide with a sigh.
Jack didn’t answer for a moment. He tapped a barely legible line of writing at the bottom right of the photograph.
‘Or not one at all. It says here, “The town from above. Third balloon ascent, 1872.”’
‘Oh,’ said Jaide. As so many times before, there was an ordinary explanation. Perhaps this meant that there was one for Martin McAndrew’s EVIL sign too. ‘Why’s it in the Compendium then?’
‘Look at the men around the whale. Check out their eyes.’
The figures around the whale were tiny, the photograph having been taken from at least a few hundred yards away from them, and perhaps fifty yards up. But when Jaide looked as close as she could without them turning into tiny, blurred splotches, she saw that every single one had strangely large eyes.
Eyes that were entirely white, without pupil or iris.
‘Their eyes are white,’ she said. ‘They must have worked for The Evil.’
‘No, they were The Evil. There’s no working for The Evil when it’s taken you over. You’re just part of it. Forever.’
Jack’s voice was hard and flat, and it was Jaide’s turn to shiver. All of a sudden he felt like a stranger to her, a distant, grown-up Jack very different to the four-minutes-younger brother she knew better than anyone. He often went like this when reminded of the times he had come face to face with The Evil in the stormwater drains below the town, particularly those times when she hadn’t been there to help him. She knew there were details he hadn’t told her. A large part of her never wanted to know what they were.
Jack, for his part, was remembering a cold voice echoing through dank tunnels: Come to us, Jackaran Kresimir Shield. Be with us. Be one of us . . .
‘Do you think there were any Wardens back then?’ Jaide asked.
‘Of course, or none of us would be alive today. Besides, it must have been a Warden who took this photograph. Even from a balloon.’
The Compendium suddenly shivered, then slammed shut. Before the twins could react, it slid across the floor and under Jaide’s bed, like an insect that had suddenly been exposed to the light.
Their bedroom door opened. Both twins were gaping at the empty floor, but their heads whipped round as their mother entered the room.
‘What are you two up to?’ asked Susan with a smile.
‘Uh, yoga,’ said Jaide quickly. ‘We learned it at school. Mr Carver is very keen on yoga.’
‘I used to do yoga with your dad,’ said Susan. ‘We went to a class every Tuesday night for quite a few years. Hey, we can do some together –’
‘Oh, I’m pretty tired,’ said Jaide hurriedly. Inwardly she was cursing herself. Mr Carver was indeed very keen on yoga, and led a class at lunchtimes for students and staff. Now she’d have to go to one to learn a few moves.
‘I’m tired too,’ said Jack, feigning a yawn.
‘All right. Tomorrow then.’ Susan patted them each on the head and said, ‘’Jamas and teeth.’
‘What about dessert?’ asked Jack hopefully as Jaide hurried off to the bathroom. Dinner already seemed like hours ago, and his stomach was feeling hollow.
‘Well, there’s that cobbler. You can have a bit before you go to bed, if you like.’
‘Oh, no, thanks, Mum,’ he said.
She tilted her head to one side and smiled at him. ‘It’s OK if you don’t like it. You don’t, do you?’
‘Um, no. Not really. Sorry.’
‘That’s OK, Jack. I’m not offended.’ She gathered him into a tight hug. ‘If your father was here, he’d make the best cake in the world, and then he’d say “tamas and jeeth”, which he still thinks is hilarious, and then he’d chase you up and down the stairs until you were too excited to sleep for a week. Despite all that, I miss him, and I know you miss him too. Am I right?’
Jack nodded. She let him go, but only so she could hold him at arm’s length and try to meet his eyes.
‘You’ve been very quiet since we moved here. Even quieter than usual. Don’t be afraid to talk about stuff,’ she said. ‘You can tell me anything, you know.’
Jack nodded again, knowing full well that if he told his mother even a small fraction of what he had learned, her mind would probably explode.
‘OK. Thanks, Mum.’
That seemed to satisfy her. She ushered him to the door.
‘When I come back from work,’ she called after him, ‘we’ll do something special.’
‘You’ll buy us a mobile phone each?’ asked Jaide, coming back up the hallway.
‘You know the answer to that. Not yet – and besides, they don’t work in this old house.’
‘But everyone else in school has one. Even Miralda King!’
‘Well, you’re not Miralda King. You’re Jaide Shield and you’re just going to have to wait until you’re a little bit older before having something like that. There’s no way we could afford the bill you two would rack up, texting each other.’
Jaide jumped into bed, making the heavy frame rattle. ‘We could text Dad.’
‘If he ever remembered to switch his phone on . . . which he doesn’t.’
Susan kissed Jaide on the forehead and turned off the main light. ‘You can read for a while, if you want. I’ll send your grandmother up to say goodnight.’
Grandma X poked her head in j
ust as Jack was pulling the covers up to his neck. She was wearing her dirty apron again, only this time it had orange-yellow stains on it as well, the same colour as curry powder.
‘Goodnight, troubletwisters,’ she said. Bewilderingly, she had the Compendium under her arm. Jaide bent down and looked under her bed, but there was nothing there. ‘Sleep well, and dream sensible dreams.’
‘Grandma,’ said Jaide before she could leave, ‘did the whalers bring The Evil to Portland, or was it here all along?’
Grandma X stopped in the doorway. ‘What makes you ask that?’
‘We saw an old photo in the Compendium.’
She nodded, but her face was shadowed so they couldn’t see her expression. ‘Well, you know that Portland is one of those places where the boundary between our world and The Evil’s is particularly thin, so –’
‘Yes, but was it humans who made it thin, or was it always like that?’
‘That is a very good question, Jaide. One we will discuss at length when the time is right.’
Then she was gone, boots tramping smartly up the stairs and through the doorway that led to the Blue Room, where the Compendium was stored for safe keeping.
‘She always says that,’ muttered Jaide. ‘It’s not very helpful.’
‘Neither was the Compendium.’
‘It’s just a book. She’s a person, and she’s supposed to be teaching us.’
‘She is teaching us,’ said Jack reasonably. ‘Only not always what we want to learn.’
Jaide grunted and rolled over on to her side, clearly not wanting to talk about it any more. In moments, she was breathing slowly and evenly.
Jack wasn’t feeling anywhere close to sleepy. His mind was snagged on the day he had first learned to shadow-walk, when The Evil had almost caught him.
Your inner nature wishes to join us, it had said, and if you do, you will become something far more powerful than any mere Warden . . .
Picking up the dusty old book from his bedside table – Jeopardy at Jute Junction, which had his father’s name written on the inside sleeve – he opened it and read perfectly well despite the near absence of light.
The book was exciting and drew him in. Almost enough to drive the memories of that horrible whispering voice from of his mind.