by J. R. Wallis
Ruby took a breath and held the gun tighter.
‘You’re doing well, Ruby,’ it said. ‘It’s always a hard thing to say the wyrd rhyme. Isn’t that right, boys?’ Jones nodded and so did Thomas Gabriel. ‘No one knows when it’s their time. You just have to accept it not only in your own life but in other people’s too.’
‘The gun’s right, Ruby,’ said Jones. ‘The wyrd knows when it’s time.’
‘But it was all my fault. If I hadn’t gone after that Vampire—’
‘It’s no one’s fault,’ interrupted Thomas Gabriel. ‘It’s just the wyrd. That’s why we say the rhyme. The more we say it, the more ready we are to accept our own end. Whenever it may be.’
Ruby sighed and took a breath before carrying on, the two boys and the gun all joining in to help her.
‘Do not be afear’d
It is only the wyrd
That wants you to leave
Which means I won’t grieve.
Do not be afear’d
It is only the wyrd
That rules all our lives
And always decides
The length of one’s life
All its joy, all its strife,
So do not be afear’d
It is only the wyrd.’
In the silence, Ruby scattered a pinch of brown dust over the body and it began to melt. As they all stood in the moonlight, listening to the hiss of the corpse, Ruby felt a little part of her heart melting too.
When it was over and the last white bubbles were popping on the grass, Ruby wiped her nose on her sleeve and gave a great wobbly sigh before taking a small white packet out of her pocket.
‘What have you got there?’ asked Jones.
‘Seeds.’ Ruby waggled the little packet.
‘What sort of seeds?’
‘Special ones. Victor Brynn gave them to me, in case.’
‘In case of what?’
‘In case he died.’ Ruby opened the packet and scattered the little brown seeds onto the grass where Victor Brynn’s body had lain. They burrowed into the ground like little grubs and vanished.
‘Are they dreaming seeds?’
‘Yes. Victor Brynn said they’d let him speak to me in my dreams if he ever had to leave me. I want to see him again. He wasn’t like either of your Masters. He was kind.’
‘Dreaming seeds never grow, Ruby,’ said Thomas Gabriel. ‘Victor Brynn’s dead. There’s no way of speaking to him now.’
‘He told me they might do if I watered them and treated them well. And I read a book about them. Into the Beyond by D. P. Thompson.’
‘There is no “beyond”. Everyone knows that book’s a load of old rubbish,’ Thomas Gabriel muttered under his breath.
‘Well, I suppose I’ll find out, won’t I?’
‘Is that your plan for carrying on learning about being a Badlander?’ asked Jones. ‘Hoping for glimpses of Victor Brynn in your dreams if the seeds grow?’
‘Part of it.’ Ruby folded up the white packet and put it in her pocket. ‘I thought I’d go and see the Cutter too.’
‘I’ve never heard of anybody called that,’ said Thomas Gabriel.
‘Well, I told you, that’s the name I heard,’ said Ruby, sticking out her chin.
‘That Badlander was probably making it up,’ said Jones. ‘Masters do all sorts of tricks to test apprentices. He was probably telling that boy something just to see if he could keep a secret.’
‘I can scry on him and find out for sure. Jones, if there’s someone in the Badlands who can alter our Commencement, it’ll mean I can do magic on my own. Then the Order will have to let me be a proper Badlander.’
‘The Order would never allow a girl in,’ said Jones. ‘They’re stuck in their ways.’
‘Victor Brynn didn’t think so. He told me the other night he hoped we might prove them wrong one day. And it wasn’t only me he said it to.’ She pointed the gun at Jones. ‘Go on, tell Jones what you told me.’
The gun cleared its throat. ‘Victor Brynn kept saying that, one day, he wanted to convince the Order that Ruby was good enough to be a Badlander. As long as she carried on studying and learning what he taught her, he thought it might be possible. He said the Order was so rotten it needed a big shock to show it the error of its ways.’
Ruby smiled. ‘I could do that, Jones, if I can do magic.’
Jones frowned because he couldn’t imagine the order ever admitting a girl.
‘I’m not going back to my old life,’ said Ruby. ‘I couldn’t bear it. She shuffled her feet. ‘I thought you’d be excited. If we can find someone to fix our Commencement, you won’t have the magic inside you. So what’s the problem?’
Jones folded his arms. ‘This Badlander you met: if he’s high up in the Order, like you said, I bet he’s wary of other Badlanders trying to find out things about him. You get caught scrying on him and that’ll be the end of everything for you and me.’ Jones shook his head. ‘My idea’s better. Instead of scrying on this person, we go and see the Lich, Du Clement, about our Commencement. We can ask him about this person called “the Cutter” and see if he really exists.’
‘But I’m a good scryer, Jones. I won’t get caught.’
Jones kicked at a tuft of grass in frustration.
Thomas Gabriel cleared his throat and the other two looked at him.
‘Ruby’s right,’ he said. ‘Scrying on someone’s easier than going to see the Lich. We almost got caught last time. And Du Clement’s as mad as a bag of frogs.’ Thomas Gabriel sighed as he shuffled his feet and rubbed his nose. ‘There’s something you need to know.’ He took out the invitation from his pocket. The clock was still ticking.
‘What’s that?’ asked Jones, peering at the white piece of card.
‘I’ve got to perform a magical test in front of the High Council in a few weeks’ time.’
‘Good luck with that,’ said the gun.
‘It’s not just my problem. Once they find out my magic’s failing and why, they’ll cast me out of the Order and take everything back from me.’
‘You mean they’ll take this cottage?’ gasped Ruby.
‘Yes, and my æhteland.’ He looked at Jones. ‘And when another Badlander takes it on the first thing they’ll do is assess it for magical anomalies. They’ll find out about you, Jones, and who you are and what you’ve done. And when they do they’ll punish you for Commencing with a girl, just like they’ll punish me for Commencing when I shouldn’t have.’
There was no sound except for the ticking of the clock as everyone thought about that.
‘I want to know more about this Cutter,’ said Thomas Gabriel. ‘If he’s as powerful as Ruby thinks, he might be able to help you two, but he might be able to help me too so Ruby keeps this place and you aren’t found out, Jones. I know I did wrong, Commencing when I shouldn’t, but I’m not a bad person. I didn’t do it to ruin your lives too.’
Jones chewed a spot inside his cheek as he thought it all through.
‘Look and see what you can then,’ he said to Ruby. ‘But don’t do anything without asking first.’
‘You can stay here and help if you like?’ shouted Ruby as Jones started walking back to the house. ‘You could take one of those special Badlander tonics like I’m going to do, so I can do some scrying now. Don’t you remember, you made me drink some tonic once to stop feeling tired before we took on the Witch and freed your parents?’
‘I’m going home,’ he said. ‘Back to where I belong. I should be asleep like a normal kid in the middle of the night.’
Thomas Gabriel left too, returning home to see if he could find out anything about the Cutter from his extensive library of books.
The full-length scrying mirror stood in a room of its own. Jones had given it to Ruby some months ago. It had been a present, his way of saying thank you to her for rescuing his parents from Mrs Easton, the Witch.
The casing surrounding the mirror was made from oak, which had been stained a deep red colour. Jones had
told Ruby he’d immediately thought of her when he’d seen the mirror in Deschamps & Sons, the department store that sold all sorts of things that Badlanders used.
Ruby loved it. Not only was it a generous present, but, whenever she was in its presence, she felt a tingle in her hands and wanted to use it. After arriving in the Badlands, Ruby had discovered her gift for scrying very early on. Victor Brynn had told her that her talent for it was better than some Badlanders who’d spent years learning the art. Sometimes she wondered if her ability was to do with being a girl.
Ruby rubbed the glass with a special cloth to remove dust and dirt, allowing ‘the best possible scrying experience’ according to the brochure that had come with the mirror. There was a premium polish too, a limited edition made with exotic oils and plants with long names given in both Latin and Anglo-Saxon that Ruby could not pronounce.
Having sipped some rather nasty-tasting tonic, her mind was much brighter and more awake, and Ruby had no trouble thinking about the man and the boy, Wilfried. Suddenly, there they were in the mirror as if she had flicked a switch to turn on a television.
They were sitting in what looked like a luxurious van, with black leather seats and wooden panelling lining the dashboard and the doors. The man was driving with the boy in the passenger seat. They were silent as the headlights pierced the dark road ahead. Sometimes a vehicle came the other way, lighting them up, making them seem to grow suddenly in their seats.
Wilfried was hunched over, writing in a leather-bound notebook. The pages of the book glowed, giving off just enough light to write by. Ruby asked the mirror to focus in on what he was writing and she saw a crude drawing of the Snarl with a brief description next to it, detailing how the creature had been overcome. There was a stick figure too in one corner, with the words ‘girl’ and a small diary entry below. As Ruby read the short paragraph, she realized it was about her and felt reassured to know her plan had worked – they believed she had been eaten by the Slobbering, meaning she’d got away without raising suspicion.
She spent the next hour or so watching the two Badlanders. It was pretty boring, with little conversation, although there seemed to be a cool tension between them that surfaced occasionally. Ruby noticed it first when the man snapped at the boy for dropping a bag of pear drops, even though it was his fault for turning a corner too fast. There were other times too, such as when the boy dropped his pen or when he moved his feet clumsily and accidentally kicked the inside of the passenger door. Eventually, the man told Wilfried to close his notebook because he found the light from the pages annoying.
Ruby had almost dozed off when the crunch of gravel, followed by the zip of a handbrake, made her sit up. The van’s engine cut out and there was a moment’s silence. The interior light clicked on as the doors opened.
Wilfried and his Master were clearly very disciplined. Instead of going straight to bed, even though it was early morning, they brought in everything they needed from the van first. It was a different type of vehicle to the camper van that Jones and Maitland had used. It was much bigger and roomier with a bathroom and a kitchen. There was even a kind of living room with a soft leather sofa in the shape of a ‘U’.
The man and the boy still didn’t speak much, being too busy unloading, but eventually, when they were finished, they sat down in the kitchen and drank a cup of tea.
The man cleared his throat and seemed ready to get something off his mind. ‘Losing the girl was a black mark against you, Wilfried.’
‘But sir—’
The man raised his hand and the boy stopped speaking.
The two of them sat silently for a while. And then the boy spoke again.
‘Do I still have a chance of Commencement, sir?’
The man took a sip of tea and then set down his cup in its saucer.
‘For the moment, yes. You’re young. It’s human nature to fail. Everyone does. But it’s the mark of a Badlander to learn from their mistakes. I’ll be watching out for that.
‘You’re to be up early in just a few hours and attend to your chores as usual. I will go to see the Cutter after breakfast, which you will make for me in the usual way. Shall we say nine o’clock?’
Ruby stood up and stretched. The image in the mirror vanished. It was time for bed. The tonic she’d taken was wearing off and she was now desperately tired after everything that had happened over the course of the night. She was feeling sad and very emotional about Victor Brynn too and she knew her exhaustion wasn’t helping her mood at all.
After returning home, Ed had lain in his bed for some time, unable to sleep. The magic had kept him awake to begin with, telling him how good he’d been at conjuring up the fengnett with Ruby. The voice had sounded stronger, as if his visit back to the Badlands had energized it.
You’re a natural, Jones.
You should go back and live in the Badlands with Ruby.
You could mentor her now Victor Brynn’s gone.
Ed had put his pillow over his head at first. Then burrowed down deep under his sheets. But he couldn’t get away from the voice until, finally, it stopped of its own accord, like a candle that had been blown out.
But, even so, he couldn’t sleep after that. In the silence, he became aware of something waking up in him, like a cat stretching after a long sleep. He wasn’t sure what it was at first. But it didn’t take long to work out what it was. It was a sense of pride. He had done something good tonight, by taking out the Vampire, because he had made the world a little safer.
Ed felt a glow inside that warmed him. He hadn’t felt so proud of himself for a long time. Not, in fact, since he’d been an apprentice to Maitland, working to make the world less dangerous for people. Ordinary boys in their ordinary lives could never do something that mattered so much. And Ed thought about that. His head became so full of thinking, it felt like someone was turning a handle, churning out thought . . . after . . . thought . . . after . . . thought.
In the end, Ed got up, dressed and left the house. He slipped into the dark street and his senses came alive because he was back in the Badlands now, creeping through the dark where anything dangerous could be lurking. Ed crossed over the road to the row of derelict houses and wrenched open an old, warped door.
He walked around the house for some time, inspecting each room, looking for signs of any creature living there. The longer he stayed, the more he remembered the telltale signs to watch out for, like strange patches of cold air floating in a room that could suggest the presence of a gliderunge. Or glistening marks that might appear on damp walls if you breathed on them, indicating an infestation of hammer beetles. Or how to listen for Clampet Trolls living under the floorboards.
A part of him felt ashamed for returning so readily to his old ways, but another part of him secretly enjoyed it too because, after living for some months as an ordinary boy, he had remembered how important being a Badlander was. He wasn’t sure when he’d forgotten that.
It was almost morning by the time he crept back into his house and climbed into bed. He fell asleep as soon as his head touched the pillow.
He dreamt about meeting the Cutter, a tall man with knives for hands, who sliced him into two boys. One, called Jones, returned to the Badlands, happily hunting creatures there because he was good at it. The other, Ed, lived with his parents, slowly making friends and going to school, no different to anyone else. The Cutter told him that it was the only way for him to live now that he was a boy with two names who wanted to be two different people.
In the end, Ed woke up breathless and wrapped in his sheets, frightened and confused.
NINE
Ruby felt sorry for Wilfried as she sat watching him in the scrying mirror the next morning. The scrambled eggs he’d made were just how his Master liked them and the coffee was to his taste as well, judging by the way the man wolfed his breakfast down. But he was still hard on the boy, scolding him by finding fault in things where there was none. Ruby watched him point at dirt on the floor where there wasn’t
any, and tap the rim of a china cup that was most likely chipped decades before. The man even complained about the spray of wild flowers on the kitchen table that had drooped in the vase.
Ruby watched Wilfried absorb these comments like they were arrows and Ruby shouted at the man once or twice. He couldn’t hear, of course. But it made her feel better.
‘Ruby, Masters are supposed to be hard on their apprentices. It toughens them up,’ said the gun, lying on the floor beside the scrying mirror.
‘Victor Brynn wasn’t. He was right about the Order needing to change. It’s full of ambitious men being horrible to kids. No wonder Jones wanted to be an ordinary boy.’
‘Why are you so keen on being a Badlander then?’
Ruby picked at a thread that had come loose in the seam of her old black jeans. ‘Well, using magic was pretty high on the list at first. And using cool stuff too, like weapons and things that are charmed.’
‘Like me, you mean?’
‘I suppose so, yes. But it’s not just about that anymore or even wanting to be the first girl Badlander. It’s about making the Order understand it needs to change. That would be a good thing to do, right? In memory of Victor Brynn?’ Ruby swallowed down something that seemed to have got stuck in her throat and said nothing else.
The gun was quiet for a while as it thought about what she’d said.
‘If Victor Brynn thought you could do it then perhaps you will. You just need to believe in yourself, Ruby, the way he did.’
Ruby nodded. ‘I was hoping you’d say something like that.’
When the two Badlanders had finished breakfast, Wilfried was banished to the garden to weed and pick various herbs. His Master went to his study, and plucked a black leather book from the shelves and sat down at his desk, pulling a black pencil out of a pot.
Ruby leant forward, cross-legged on the floor like a frog about to spring, keen to see what he might do next.
But the man didn’t write anything. Instead, he drew the picture of a key. The drawing was simple, the only details a series of curly runes that ran along the stem. He tipped the book upside down, shaking it hard until a real key fell from the page and clattered onto the table.