by Amy Wilson
The cat meows again, and I swear I can almost hear the footsteps of a hundred mice fleeing from that sound. The green eyes blink at me, the tail curls in a question mark and then Portia bounds up on to the nearest windowsill and settles down to sleep. Ganymede looks back at me.
‘Explain yourself,’ she says, her tone like an iron trap. ‘Why are you here? How did you get past my wards and all the traps I laid?’
‘I didn’t notice any,’ I say, steeling myself. ‘Perhaps you forgot.’
She steps back, her eyebrows swooping up. ‘So you dare to speak? You dare to speak, and to cheek me? What is this? Who are you?’
‘Clementine.’
She looks me up and down. ‘You most certainly are not a small orange fruit! IMPERTINENCE! Now tell me this instant, what business do you have here? Years and none dared disturb my peace: a thousand nights of solitude, broken by nothing but the song of the moon. It was delicious, it was a melodious clamour of nothing, and now there is YOU! Why have you come back here?’
‘My name is Clementine.’
She frowns. ‘There are many moons you could be named for, why did your parents choose fruit? To go with your hair?’ She pauses, a wrinkle appearing between her brows as she stares at my hair. ‘WHO is your mother?’ She whips out suddenly, lunging in close as if to smell me, making all the hairs on my arms stand up. ‘I know that fiery hair.’
‘M-my . . .’
‘Callisto? Is my Callisto your mother?’ She circles me, her skirts rustling as she goes. ‘Are you hers? DON’T stand there gaping at me, child!’
‘Callie,’ I breathe, utterly distracted by her moth-like fluttering all about in my face, lace and tatters flying. ‘Pa said she was called Callie.’
‘Callie?’ Tears stand in her dark eyes. ‘What is Callie? Of what moon does that tally? Do you mean Callisto? She was my most beloved heart. But . . . I didn’t know she had a child. She can’t have had a child!’ She looks me up and down, her hands shaking as she reaches out, and then she stops herself. The lights around us flicker before going out and, in the new darkness, shadows spiral down her face in fine lines. ‘I would have known!’
‘Who are you?’ I ask in a whisper. Can this creature really be related to me? She barely seems human at all.
‘I am Ganymede,’ she says, still staring at me. ‘Ganymede the eldest, and then there was bright Io, and then our youngest, Callisto. We lived here together for many years before my solitude began. But what do you know of all of this? How did you find me?’
‘I-I don’t know . . .’ I stammer. ‘I didn’t know about this house until yesterday. My mother left when I was small. She left a book, and this house was in it . . .’
‘Do you mean her diary? But why wouldn’t she tell me, if she’d had a child?’ Ganymede mutters again, looking up at the snowglobes that hang from the ceiling on slender coils of golden wire. She taps at one with a long finger and it begins to whirl, a tiny storm of steel beads over a narrow, spindly bridge, a tiny man clinging to the struts. ‘We are sisters; we trusted each other with everything!’ She frowns. ‘How old are you, child?’
‘Twelve.’
‘All this time!’ She steps closer, her eyes gleaming. ‘Where have you been? If you are hers, why would she hide you from us?’
‘I was with my pa. He told me she left, but he never knew why. Do you know what happened?’
Something flashes across her face, but she quickly recovers herself. ‘I can’t help you,’ she says. ‘I don’t even know who you are.’
‘I’m Callisto’s daughter! Pa gave me her book, and this morning he told me to never come back because you’re dangerous, but here I am.’
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘So you are. And you have disobeyed, which is something your mother would have done. If this is all to be believed. You have a book, you say – let me see it.’ She stoops towards me, her spine curving like a great iron hook.
Clementine!
Dylan. I cling to his voice; that’s why I came back. Never mind Ganymede. Never mind anything else. I came to get Dylan out of his prison and back home.
Ganymede screeches as I turn and run down the corridor. The marble walls shudder and the globes shift on their shelves, glass tinkling all around me; worlds sliding, falling, smashing into each other. I look over my shoulder as I skitter round a corner, and she is hurrying after me, her face taut with concentration, globes all around her slowly righting themselves, not a single one broken. She moves faster and faster, shadows boiling in the air around her, and I run harder, pulling globes off shelves as I go to keep her busy. I don’t know what I’ll do when I get to the attic, but Dylan is there, so I keep going anyway, up the iron staircase, calling for him – ‘DYLAN!’
A flash of something goes through me as I put him at the centre of my mind, and when I skid into the room, the carpet crunches like snow beneath my feet. It is snow beneath my feet. Snow in my eyes, and my mouth; snow pelting into my face on a bitter, sweeping wind. There is no attic room here. There are no snowglobes. There is no carpet. No domed windows – just snow. I take a step, stretching my arms out for balance, and immediately slip on ice, skidding down a slope and colliding with a small wooden hut.
I burrow my face into my jacket and put one hand out to the rough, cold wood, hauling myself up and staggering around until I find the door. It opens with a creak, and I brace myself as I go in, wondering what I’m going to find next.
It’s just an empty room, with bare walls and little snow drifts on the floor where there are gaps between the wooden boards. There’s nothing here, and yet as I stand in the middle, shivering and trying to work out what just happened, the room starts to change.
First, a rug appears on the floor, brightly striped and just like the one in my room at home. I step on to it. When I look up, there is a chandelier swinging from the ceiling, looking very much like one of those in Ganymede’s house. I blink, and when I open my eyes, the walls are covered in blue paper, with pictures of my pa and me hanging over a tiny wrought-iron fireplace like the one in our sitting room. Even the shining red tiles on the hearth are the same. I step closer to one of the pictures and there’s me, there’s Pa, and there’s a smudged shape beside him. The place my mother might be, if I knew what she looked like.
It’s all an illusion. It must be. It’s what this place would be, if I lived here. If I used my magic to make it a home. The thought thunders at me, and the walls shake as I begin to understand. Of course, I’m in a globe! When I ran from Ganymede, I must have somehow used my magic to pull me through, to get me to Dylan.
Dylan’s globe, with the little wooden house.
I wrench open the little door and stumble out into a whirling white storm.
‘Dylan?’ I shout. The door slams shut behind me and I start down the slope keeping the house at my back. When I saw him last time, he was at the bottom, and the house was at the top. I don’t know how I ended up in here, but if I’m inside the globe, he must be here somewhere.
Mustn’t he?
‘DYLAN!’
It’s impossible to see. I just keep sliding my feet forward, slithering and scrambling, down and down, over snow-covered rock ledges and patches of sheer ice, until the way gets steeper and I lose my footing entirely, careering down the rest of the hill on my backside and landing in a heap at the bottom, an invisible barrier preventing me going any further.
‘Clementine?’
I turn to look at the boy I was supposed to be rescuing.
‘Dylan!’
He stoops down to me, his face pinched with cold. He looks thin and tired, an echo of the boy I saw at school yesterday. What has happened to him here in that short time?
‘What are you doing here?’ he whispers. ‘How did you get in?’
I look around. It’s hard to breathe in the icy air. I get to my knees and tuck my freezing hands into my armpits. ‘I don’t know. I was in the house with Ganymede, she was chasing me, and I ended up in that little house!’
‘The house up there?’ He
squints as he looks up the hill; it’s barely visible in the mist of fine snow. ‘How did you do that? What did you do?’
‘I don’t know . . .’ My voice trails off. ‘She’s terrifying. I was running to get you, and she was coming after me, and I ended up here. How did that happen?’ I look around, but there’s not much to see: a dull grey sky, still showering us with snow, and the solitary icy hill, the matchstick house just a smudge of brown overhead. No pathways. No tracks but our own. ‘What do we do now?’
He stares down at me, his eyes bloodshot and bleary. Of course he doesn’t have the answers; I was supposed to be the one rescuing him. Now we’re both stuck in his snowglobe, and whatever magic I had in me just a moment ago has fled, leaving me light-headed.
‘Get up,’ Dylan says, pulling me out of the snow.
A storm is building, dark clouds swell on the horizon, and a fierce, bitter wind is blowing. My cheeks sting with cold, and my feet are like blocks of ice.
‘Hold on to Helios, keep moving.’ He pulls me to the huge dog and tucks one of his hands deep into his golden coat, gesturing for me to do the same. Helios looks at me over his shoulder and huffs, but he doesn’t move away. His fur is wiry, his body warm and firm as a rock between us.
‘What are we going to do?’ I whisper, trying not to let my teeth chatter. ‘I meant to get you out, not put myself in!’
He stares at me.
‘Maybe it’s a dream,’ he mutters to himself. ‘You’re not really here. That’s what it is. You’re an illusion.’ He searches me over with haunted eyes. ‘Just one of Io’s tricks.’
‘I’m not a trick!’
‘How can I know that?’
‘I know things.’ I search my mind for the right thing to say as he stares unblinking. ‘Your best friend is Jago. You and I talk on the bus to school. You’re kind, sometimes . . .’
‘I watched,’ he says. ‘Jago was mean, and I didn’t stop him. But that was a long time ago, and none of it means anything now.’ He sighs and leans into Helios. ‘If you’re not a trick, you must be my subconscious, because I’ve been in here too long and I’m losing my mind.’
‘No,’ I say. ‘You’re not. You’ve been here for a day, that’s all, however long it might seem to you. And now I’m here with you, so you could at least look a bit happy about that! Look, Helios can see me. Can’t you, boy?’ I wheedle and smile, but Helios refuses to look at me, which doesn’t help. ‘I swear, Dylan, I’m really here. We just need to find our way out!’
‘Out of here?’ He shakes his head. ‘There is no way out.’
‘Well, I got in, so it must be possible!’ I turn from him and try to stir the magic I used to get in here, the magic that made the mean little house a home, but the spark has gone, for now at least. ‘How did you end up in here, anyway?’
He mutters something under his breath.
‘What?’
‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘And you didn’t really get in, because you’re not really here. Only Io can get in and out, and you’re just an illusion sent by her!’ His eyes flicker, and suddenly he rushes at me, knocking me to the ground.
‘Dylan!’ I shout, pushing him off me and rolling out of his way. He stands up, looming over me. ‘Why did you do that?’
‘You’re not real; you can’t be real,’ he whispers, staring, staring at me all the time. ‘Are you a dream?’ He pinches his arm, and I notice there’s a row of small bruises on the inside of his wrist where he’s clearly done it countless times before.
‘Stop that!’ I reach out and grab his wrist just as a bitter wind starts to howl around us. Snow blows into our faces, the flakes small and hard as ice.
Dylan looks down at my hand.
‘You’re warm,’ he whispers. His eyes widen, and he looks me up and down. ‘Is it really you?’
‘It’s really me,’ I say. ‘I promise, Dylan. It’s me. I’m so sorry I didn’t get you out the first time I found the house. I was so shocked, and Ganymede was there . . . I came back, though. I came back to get you out!’
‘You got in by yourself? Can’t you get us out the same way?’
‘I don’t know how! I didn’t mean to get in – it just happened . . .’
‘Make it just happen again, then!’
I close my eyes, partly to escape his intensity, and try to see Ganymede’s house, to will us back there somehow, but the images flicker and falter. I can’t grab hold of anything.
‘I can’t,’ I say eventually.
‘We need to move,’ he says after a long, pained silence, as the wind howls and the snow beneath our feet starts to shift along the ground. ‘Don’t stand there like a flag – you’ll get the full force of it. Come on.’ He starts down the icy rocks and, with a quick look at the sky, darts round to the right, gesturing for me to follow him.
‘Why don’t we try the house?’ I ask. ‘At least we’d be out of the wind.’
‘I can’t get up the hill,’ he says. ‘I’ve tried; it’s too steep.’
‘We could try it together . . .’ I stare up the hill. It looks impossible, and my magic is a damp curl in the base of my stomach, good for nothing right now.
‘Forget the house!’ Dylan says. ‘Just keep your head down – there’s no time now.’
We crouch with the hill at our backs, and Helios sits on our feet, as the wind picks up, and the snow flies tornado-fast over our heads, until it feels like the whole world has turned upside down. I make myself as small as I can, my face tucked hard against my knees, and the storm beats all around us with a shuddering, booming roar. And in the midst of it all darkness falls, quick as a light being turned off. It’s not like falling asleep; it’s like being turned to stone. I can hear my heartbeat, feel my hair streaming in the wind, my aching legs, but I can’t move. I can’t speak. I start to panic, but a warm shoulder wedges hard against my own and, though I can’t see it, I can picture him, sitting by me. I can feel the warmth of Helios at my feet.
When the storm has passed, I still can’t move. I still can’t speak. I just stare at Dylan. It’s horrifying. No shelter, no comfort. Just being thrown around at someone else’s whim, turned to a static figure in a globe, unable to do anything about it. Was it Io, or Ganymede, stalking through the attic room? Will she discover us in here together, and do something even worse to us?
‘Dylan . . .’
‘Give it a minute,’ he says in a small, tight voice, as Helios bounds up and sits by him, licking at his face. Snow settles thickly over everything, including us, and there’s a new, eerie silence in the aftermath of all the chaos.
‘Was that Io?’ I ask after a while, brushing the snow off my shoulders.
Dylan tips his head forward and shakes it from his hair.
‘Is that what she does?’ I ask.
‘That’s what she does,’ he says. ‘But I thought you knew all about it already.’
‘I don’t know everything. I know there are three sisters, Ganymede, then Io, then Callisto, my mother . . .’
‘You’re related to them all?’ He looks truly horrified and it prickles at me. Even here, I’m the weird one. ‘Where’s your mum, then?’ he demands. ‘Can’t you just call her to get you out of here?’
‘No! I don’t know . . . She left when I was small. So, no, I can’t just call her.’
‘You must know something,’ he demands, though his voice is softer now.
‘I know we have to get out of here,’ I say, turning my back on him. ‘We need to get to that little house.’
It feels like I’ve been stumbling around at the bottom of the hill for hours, and I’m getting nowhere. I’ve tried from every angle, up every curve, but my boots weren’t made for mountain climbing, and the dry snow hides uneven ground. My legs are sodden up to my knees, and every time I think I’ve found purchase on the rocks beneath, they shift under my feet, and the whole lot tumbles down around me. My palms are bruised and scraped, my knees stiff. Every so often Dylan grumbles something behind me, and I try to ignore it, but
it starts to remind me of school after a while. How can it be fair, really, to be caught up in some magical nightmare adventure with one of the people who makes my reality so flipping difficult?
‘Oh, shut up, Dylan,’ I burst eventually.
Tiny amber sparks fleck the skin of my hands as my frustration boils over, and a web of icy veins breaks out across the ground before me. I stretch forward, frowning, and grab at a thick one. It holds as I touch it, and it feels like the roots of a tree, covered in a thin layer of snow. The fine, knobby strands thicken and spread over the hill as I watch, sending a small avalanche down to Dylan and Helios.
‘What are you doing?’ demands Dylan.
‘Climbing to the house!’ I shout, trying not to think too hard about what’s actually happening as the roots twine further and further up the hill. My feet find purchase easily in the new tangle, my hands catch strands of twisted wood that hold firm beneath my weight.
‘You’re making a tree!’ Dylan cries out in a strangled sort of voice, a moment later. ‘There’s a tree on the hill! Stop it, Clem – Io will see you!’
‘It’s fine!’ I shout back, trying to keep calm for fear it’ll all just melt away. If I lose the thread of it now, maybe the whole thing will just disappear as quickly as it appeared, and we’ll be stuck at the bottom again. I keep my eyes on the ground before me, feed the sparks on my hands with sheer determination. ‘I’m sure it was here already; it was probably just hibernating. Are you coming? You wanted a way out of here – this is it!’
I look back. His eyes flash like mirrors as he looks up at me, and he wraps his arms round himself, clearly not intending to budge.
‘Oh for goodness’ sake.’ I stare at him, and then at the huge shaggy dog by his side. ‘Helios!’ I shout. ‘Come!’ He gives a little ruff, putting one paw forward. ‘Come on, boy – come to me!’
‘Stop that!’ says Dylan, holding on to him. ‘Leave him alone. He’s mine!’
‘Come with him, then!’ I say. ‘Or do you want to be stuck here forever?’
The tree is silver-grey and smooth as glass, rising up from the hill and casting shadows over all the white. I keep my eyes on it as I heave my way up the last part of the frozen ground, grabbing at the roots that curl like ribbons around me. Dylan is climbing behind me in silence, and Helios is already at the top. He scampers away and then returns to the brow of the hill, barking excitedly, his tail whipping through snow and sending it swishing down on top of us in a fine cloud.