by J. R. Wallis
As Thomas Gabriel waited for the Memory Leech to take away any memories Pindlebury had of their earlier meeting, he looked at the collection of rare books on the shelves. One book piqued his interest. In gold embossed lettering was the title Some Great Badlanders and their Stories by Geoffrey Phillips. Thomas Gabriel flicked through the dense pages of prose, imagining how he might be listed in such a book in the future, if he passed his test in front of the High Council. But what struck him the most was that Geoffrey Phillips had used an intriguing way of gathering the research about the Badlanders discussed in his book. Phillips hadn’t just read other people’s accounts: he had gathered his research by going back to the past, and observing the various Badlanders first-hand.
According to the foreword in the book, Philips had been such a gifted scryer that he had used the skill to go back in time to watch his subjects.
Thomas Gabriel heard a slipping and sucking sound and saw the Memory Leech presenting itself from Pindlebury’s ear. It fell onto the sleeping man’s shoulder, noticeably fatter than before.
The boy slapped the book shut, stashing it quickly in his pocket, then moved the others on the shelf across to make the gap seem less obvious.
SIXTEEN
Ruby had barely slept an hour or two after the previous night’s exertions when Thomas Gabriel appeared in her bedroom, his palms fizzing from Slap Dust, and shook her awake.
‘What? When? Who?’ Ruby blinked in the daylight coming through the gap in the curtains and yawned and rubbed her eyes. Gradually, Thomas Gabriel came into focus. ‘What are you doing here? Aren’t you tired?’
‘No, I took an extra strong tonic. I’ve brought one for you too.’ He held out a bottle full of a sickly yellow mixture and unscrewed the top. The smell made Ruby want to gag.
‘No thanks.’ Her head hit the pillow and she closed her eyes. ‘I’m tired, Thomas Gabriel. Come back later.’
‘No. I’ve got something to show you.’ He drew back the curtains and made Ruby groan.
‘Can’t it wait?’
‘The clock’s still ticking, remember?’ Thomas Gabriel pulled out his invitation to the High Council meeting and held it to her ear, making her curse.
‘Thomas Gabriel, your test is not for weeks yet.’
‘So you’ve already worked out how to find all the bits of Drewman’s body, even though we don’t have what I need to cast the spell, have you?’
‘No.’
Thomas Gabriel pulled back her covers. ‘Well, I have.’
‘Hey!’
‘Ruby, drink this tonic because you’ve got work to do. You need to practise going back in time.’
She looked at him. ‘Going back in time? Okay, now you’ve got my attention.’
As she sat in the kitchen, drinking some very strong coffee and eating a piece of toast, she flipped through the pages of the book. She slapped it shut and ran her thumbs up and down the spine, and rubbed the cover.
‘Well, the book’s real enough,’ she said. ‘But as for what’s inside it . . .’ She sucked on her teeth. ‘Did this person, Phillips, really go back in time? Is that even possible?’
‘You’re the expert scryer. I thought you’d know.’
‘I haven’t seen time travel mentioned in any of the books I’ve read in Maitland’s collection. And I’ve never felt it’s possible when I’ve looked into a mirror. There must be a secret way of doing it. I’d need some instruction.’
‘Well, we could try looking in my house; maybe Simeon had some books on advanced techniques?’
Thomas Gabriel stood up, ready to leave.
‘Er, I’m not going anywhere till I’m out of my jim-jams and washed and dressed properly.’
‘Fine, I’ll go and start looking now.’
By the time Ruby appeared in the library at Thomas Gabriel’s house in Hampstead, wearing her usual old army camouflage jacket and feeling more awake, Thomas Gabriel had searched through a number of bookshelves. But, after another hour or so, it seemed the hunt was hopeless.
‘Let’s try the cellar,’ suggested Thomas Gabriel. ‘Simeon kept books down there too, ones he didn’t use. There might be something.’
The cellar was cold and smelt of the sea. They found tea chests full of books packed in plastic bags and insulated with shredded newspaper to protect them from the damp. But not from spiders, though. Ruby leapt back each time she found one even as they scuttled away from the light.
Right at the bottom of the last tea chest, Ruby pulled out a book entitled Scrying Time. It was small. Old. The leather cover was wizened and mottled like the skin of an old apple. Ruby slid the book out of its plastic cover and then looked down the list of chapters before flicking through the pages.
Most of the book talked about the history of scrying through time and the discovery of the ability to travel back to the past. It seemed to be a feat that few had ever achieved, and no one had ever managed to go forward into the future. One chapter discussed whether the future might be impossible to access because it didn’t actually exist.
‘Is time like a river that flows forward but only into the dark as it does so?’ Ruby read out loud.
‘No idea,’ said Thomas Gabriel. ‘And who cares? It’s the past we need to be concerned with.’
‘Agreed. But my brain’s sore just thinking about it.’ Ruby flicked on through the book to the practicalities of travelling back in time and started to read. The first thing that interested her was that, unlike normal scrying, a scryer needn’t have been to a place before if they were going back to it in the past. She kept on reading, taking note of a section written in bold type:
Important!
After successfully going back in time, you must not forget to do the most important thing of all. You must pluck out a section of your entry point into the past, which will appear as a shimmering shape in the air. It will be easy to pull out a small piece from it. When you want to return to the present, this piece will guide you back to what will now be your exit point. Forgetting to take such a piece will make it much harder to find your way back to your own time.
‘Well?’ asked Thomas Gabriel. When Ruby looked up, she realized she’d been so immersed in the book she hadn’t heard him repacking the chests of books. He was brushing dirt and dust from the sleeves of his herringbone coat. Ruby had read most of the chapter and had got the general idea.
‘I can go back in time. Maybe . . . Apparently, no one knows for sure until they try it. There’s a ritual to go through, blah-blah-blah, and then there’s the actual travelling through the glass or the mirror and arriving at the moment in time you want to. That can take practice. And even if you can do all that there might be a big problem.’
‘Which is?’ Thomas Gabriel plucked a twist of newspaper from his hair.
‘Even if people do go back in time, they can’t always get back. There are Badlanders who’ve gone through a scrying mirror and never been seen again.’
‘That would certainly be a problem.’
‘There might be a way round it, though.’ She walked over to Thomas Gabriel and tested a bicep. She wasn’t entirely convinced by what she found.
‘The book says it’s possible to pull someone back through time as long as the person doing the pulling is strong enough. Apparently, time’s a bit sticky. It says on your first try you should always have someone there to help pull you back in case there’s a problem. I’d like that person to be you if you’re up for it? Having the amulet means you should have no problem conjuring up a spell to pull me back if you need to.’
Thomas Gabriel winked. ‘So not Jones, then?’
Ruby thought about what he might be implying and raised an eyebrow as high as it would go.
‘No, not Jones.’
Thomas Gabriel flexed his arm. ‘Reckon I’m strong enough anyway,’ he said. ‘But I’m happy to use the amulet of course.’ He felt something warm bubble up inside as he thought about the amulet in his pocket. Of course he’d like to use it again, after it had given him so
much power last time. In fact, he was looking forward immensely to the next opportunity to use it.
Later that day, after returning to the cottage, Ruby took a bath in special oil designed to make her skin smooth for travelling through time. Thomas Gabriel had bought it for her at Deschamps & Sons, given that a girl buying such an item would have raised difficult questions.
As the water lapped round her, she lay back and imagined going into the store herself one day to order whatever she needed. Perhaps some premium polish for her scrying mirror? Or maybe a younger set of imps to help around the house? A Badlander could buy anything they wanted from the large department store in London. Jones had told her it stretched for miles deep under the city unbeknown to ordinary people. Ruby considered how wonderful it would be to walk through all the vast corridors and different departments, with regular people not having the faintest idea she was far below them.
The oil smelt of almonds and peppermint and it left Ruby’s skin feeling very smooth and with a slight sheen. After bathing, she trimmed her fingernails and smoothed down her short black hair with wax that Victor Brynn had used on his own unruly hair.
As she combed the wax through her hair, she wondered if she should grow it long again. She still kept it short because she was a runaway from her foster parents and didn’t want anyone recognizing her. But, despite the need to look different, she missed her long black hair. It had always been a part of who she was.
The perfume of the wax brought back memories of Victor Brynn and a lump formed in Ruby’s throat as she blinked back tears, thinking about all the things they’d done in the short time they’d known each other.
Victor Brynn had loved the garden at the cottage and had taken her round it day after day, teaching her the names of plants and shrubs and trees. She’d found it boring to start with, but had come to love the garden because the man’s enthusiasm had been so infectious. He would tell her stories about how certain flowers had got their names as well as exciting tales of how plants and seeds had saved his life in dangerous situations.
It made her all the more determined to prove her worth as a Badlander now by going back in time, for she knew how proud it would have made him. And achieving such a feat, she hoped, might be just the thing to shock Badlanders into sitting up and taking notice of her and make a difference to the Order as Victor had wished she might.
According to the book, the ritual bathing and cleaning were as much about being mentally ready as physically. The concentration required in preparing the body was thought to quiet the mind and focus it on the journey, giving better results. Ruby was keen to try anything that might help, given it was her first attempt at time travel.
When she was ready, Ruby went down to her scrying room where the large full-length mirror was located. Thomas Gabriel was waiting. He was practising magic, casting different spells, producing white sparks that became daggers or spears or strange, hooked scimitars at the ends of his fingers, lunging forward with them as if tackling some creature only he could see.
Ruby stood there, watching him, the amulet bobbing on his wrist. He stopped when he saw her, out of breath, his face red and his lips shining.
‘Drewman said the amulet was dangerous,’ Ruby reminded him. ‘That you shouldn’t wear it all the time.’
‘I know.’ Thomas Gabriel picked up an empty glass vial from the floor. ‘I’m taking the bitter potions like he said.’ He took off the stopper and thrust the vial under Ruby’s nose, making her screw up her face at the smell. ‘As long as I take them, I’ll be fine.’
Ruby wanted to say something else. She wasn’t sure what it was exactly that made her feel uncomfortable about it, but the Black Amulet was strange. It seemed to suck in the daylight. To have a power that was beyond any of them scared her. Thomas Gabriel had definitely changed a little, even if he was taking the bitter potions. All she could keep thinking about was Drewman’s head on the pedestal.
Thomas Gabriel pointed to the large coil of stout rope beside him. Attached to one end of it was a much thinner and silkier looking material with a loop at one end, which he held up for Ruby to see.
‘We’ll tighten the loop at this end round your waist,’ he said, slipping it over her head and sliding it down until it rested on her hips. He took a sniff. ‘You smell like Victor Brynn,’ he said.
‘Is that a problem?’
‘No.’ But Ruby saw something uncomfortable in his eyes that didn’t match what he was saying.
‘What is it?’
‘It’s just . . . well, it’s sad what happened to him, you know. I liked him.’
‘You’re right. It is sad. So let’s make him proud, shall we? You never know, he might be watching from somewhere.’
‘Do you think that’s true?’
Thomas Gabriel looked down at the floor. Shuffled his feet. Ruby patted him on the shoulder. ‘If you’re worried Simeon’s somewhere, watching you, and knows you took that key without his blessing then he hasn’t said anything yet, has he?’ The boy shook his head. ‘Right, so let’s focus on what we do know, shall we?’
She picked up the small tin of polish beside the mirror and flipped off the lid. She worked the polish vigorously into the mirror with a cloth, making sure all of the glass was gleaming. After admiring the shine, she tightened the loop round her waist and checked it was secure.
‘Okay, let’s try the test. Ready?’ Thomas Gabriel nodded. ‘I’ll be back in a minute. Hopefully.’
She took a couple of deep breaths, then imagined where she wanted to go. As an image appeared in the mirror, she peered closer and saw the hallway outside the room she and Thomas Gabriel were standing in now.
‘If I can’t get back or I’m in trouble,’ she said, turning round to look at the boy, ‘then I’ll give three tugs on the rope. One will mean I’m fine,’ and then she stepped through the mirror.
Instantly, it felt different to the experience she usually had of travelling through the mirror to a different location. Time was much thicker. Passing through it was rather like wading in mud. Ruby wondered if it might be even more difficult going a long way back in time. Did it get thicker the further you travelled?
Her hearing was muffled. There was a strange, sweet smell, rather like the buttery popcorn she used to have at the cinema. Ruby popped out into the hallway of the house and landed rather heavily, stumbling, and almost collapsing onto the floor. Her ‘reappearance’, as the book had called it, needed some practice, she decided. She checked every part of her had come through the glass by looking in a mirror hanging on the wall. The book had warned of lost ears and hair too, even strips of skin. Fortunately for Ruby, everything looked like it was in order, although she noticed a small rip in her jacket she would have to fix just as she had done to the holes made by the Snarl’s talons and the big one the Slobbering had made after leaping on her.
The rope was still attached to her waist and she followed it back to a point at which it vanished into a rectangular void full of a very slight haze. Ruby remembered the warning she had read in the book. This faint shimmer that was barely perceptible to the eye was her entry point and would be her exit point too.
Looking into the hazy air, there was no sign of where she had come from or of Thomas Gabriel, although she could still feel him holding tightly to the rope. She went closer to the almost invisible entry point. She could just tell that it was exactly the same shape and size as the mirror she had come through. Ruby reached out and pinched out a little piece of it as the book had instructed her to do. Then she turned round and listened.
Her heart leapt with joy as she heard her own voice! It was a strange sensation to think she was on the other side of the door, but it gave her a huge thrill because it meant she had done what she’d set out to do. She had gone back in time and could hear herself in the room she had just left. She crept forward to the door and put her ear to it. Her past self was busy talking to Thomas Gabriel about Victor Brynn and Simeon. Her voice seemed different to how she imagined it sounded. M
ore sing-songy. And bossier too.
The rope tugged gently and she knew Thomas Gabriel was checking she was all right. She tugged back once to say she was, but carefully, so as not to make a noise. The one thing she knew she couldn’t do on any account was alert anybody to her presence. The book had been very clear on this rule. Badlanders who went back in time had to be bescéawereas, and not be observed at all, to avoid impacting on the past. Any change risked altering the outcome of events from that moment on, creating a knock-on effect into the present and altering it forever. If such a thing happened, it meant a Badlander might return to a different present to the one they’d left.
Ruby decided it was time to leave rather than risk staying any longer and being discovered. The test had been a success and now she could return home to the present. Careful not to make any noise, Ruby held up the small piece of hazy air she’d pinched from what was now her exit point. She felt it tugging towards where it had come from. Although now she could judge where the exit point was, because the rope was coming out of what looked to be thin air, Ruby knew she couldn’t wear a rope every time. Without the piece she was holding, she realized just how difficult it would be to find the exit point again under normal circumstances.
As she waded through time and popped through the mirror back to where Thomas Gabriel was waiting, Ruby breathed a sigh of relief as she looked around, realizing everything was just how she had left it. She felt elated at having travelled through time, but also scared of the dangers it posed. The thought of being stuck somewhere in the past, never to return, made her blood run cold.
SEVENTEEN
Time travelling, it seemed, made Ruby tired and hungry. As she ate and drank, she made a note of how she was feeling as well as writing down her experiences about her first journey through time.
Ruby had decided to keep a diary because she didn’t want to forget anything and make a mistake, considering how much was at stake if she did. But writing everything down had another purpose too. If she recorded her experiences, it was proof of her achievement. She hoped it might lead to her being accepted by the Order, given that time travel was something only a few talented Badlanders had attempted successfully.