by Amy Wilson
He stays by me all the way to the gate, where Jago is waiting, looking between us with a frown.
‘What’s going on?’ he demands.
‘Nothing,’ Dylan says tiredly. ‘She’s OK. Just leave it for a day, can’t you?’
‘No, because she’s not OK.’
I breathe deep and think of what Ganymede taught me about control, while Jago stares at me, and Dylan looks at his feet.
‘Well, this is awkward,’ I say after a moment, when I’m sure I can trust my voice. ‘I think I’ll just head in.’
‘Yeah, you do that,’ snarls Jago. ‘I’ll just have a little chat with my friend here, make sure he’s OK.’
‘I’m fine, Jago,’ says Dylan as I head off. ‘What’s your problem?’
I turn back. Jago is small, but he’s wiry, and his expression is mean.
‘She’s my problem,’ Jago spits, gesturing towards me with another grimace.
I should just walk away, I tell myself – this isn’t my battle. But Dylan looks so conflicted. Dark clouds gather over the school as they stare at each other, and a light rain begins to fall. I stare at Dylan, wondering if he realizes he’s using his magic.
‘Look!’ Jago says as the rain gets heavier, just over their heads. ‘Right now, Dyl. She’s doing it right now!’
Dylan looks at me as the rain turns to a torrent around us all. I spread my hands beneath the deluge, telling him in my mind: It’s not me! He frowns, and I roll my eyes, turning my gaze downwards. Tiny buds begin to worm their way through the cracks in the pavement, and when they open they look just like the flowers in my mother’s book. Red petals in a star shape, sparkling amber at their centre. I ignore Jago and grin at Dylan, feeling reckless. That’s me! His eyes widen, and the rain eases off, the clouds breaking apart, just a few drops carried on the breeze to fall on the new flowers.
‘Wow,’ he says eventually with a grin as the bell rings and kids start to plough in around us.
‘You’re both sick,’ Jago says, his eyes a little wild, looking between us.
‘You wish you could make that happen,’ Dylan says.
‘Nobody should be able to make any of it happen! It’s dangerous!’
‘No,’ Dylan says, stepping closer to him. ‘We’re not dangerous. We know words hurt. We know when to stop. You should have stopped, a long time ago.’
‘She threw me across a classroom!’
‘Yes, and then I went away and learned not to do that again!’ I burst. ‘What about you? What have you learned from all the times you made my life a misery?’
‘You think I was the only one?’ he demands. ‘What about your friend Dylan here? Want to hear all the words he used about you?’
‘No, thank you,’ I say, my heart hammering at the thought, and trying to ignore it. ‘I’m not doing this any more. Just leave me alone.’
I stride away, and Dylan comes with me, and I don’t know what kind of friendship this is, but he’s beside me right now, so I guess that must mean something.
‘I never thanked you properly,’ he says as we get into the form room. ‘For coming into that snowglobe after me . . .’
I shrug. ‘It was the right thing to do.’
‘So when are we going back?’
‘I don’t know. I made Ganymede angry.’
‘How did you make her angry?’
‘I started exploring the house and she caught me. She threatened to put me in a snowglobe, and said that if she was the one who put me in I wouldn’t be able to escape again. And then she threw me out.’
‘We’ll sneak in together,’ he says. ‘And if she finds us I can always distract her while you get back in.’
‘You might get trapped again,’ I say.
‘Not if I use my magic,’ he says in a quiet voice, staring at his hands. ‘I mean, I might not get out on my own, but I’d find a way through the worlds. I could find Helios. You could find your mum. And if you got in by yourself you could get us out again. Like you did last time.’
‘I don’t know,’ I whisper as Mr Varley comes into the room. ‘You don’t need to put yourself in danger. I can probably manage.’
‘Let me help,’ he says. ‘The last few days have been terrible. I need to help.’
‘It’ll be dangerous,’ I say.
‘I know that. So is everything else. Could get hit by a bus . . .’
I snort. ‘Well, you might, but that’s a remote chance. Walking back into a house where you got trapped for months is just asking for trouble.’
‘Please?’ He stares at me, his eyes wide. ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I took it all out on you. I’m sorry I let you face everything on your own. I swear to you I’ll never let that happen again.’
The house is still hiding, but we have a plan. We know it’s there, and so we carry on as if we can see it. We help each other up the steps, and they keep glimmering and vanishing before our eyes, and it’s difficult to walk on something invisible, but we move forward anyway, drawing on our magic to help us see our way.
‘Maybe we should close our eyes,’ Dylan whispers.
His fingers are wrapped tight round my upper arm, and mine clutch at his shirt. I close my eyes and shuffle forward, moving up when my foot hits the edge of the next step.
‘What about when we get into the house, though?’ I ask, my teeth chattering.
The whole place is like a fog of ice, a mist that keeps flickering, one moment showing a great tall house that sweeps to the stars, and the next an impossible climb over the old park fence.
‘She can’t keep the whole place invisible. It’ll just be the outside,’ he says, not sounding too sure.
‘I was hoping at least this first bit would be straightforward—’
I slip on a step, and bite my lip to stop from shouting out as Dylan yanks me back, stopping me from falling into the brambles. We both end up on our knees, half laughing, half howling, tears rolling down our faces as we try not to let any sound escape. We crawl up the steps after that, collapsing with relief when we finally reach the top and the carved marble porch is at least ninety per cent visible, mist swirling over the vast, skin-covered door.
‘It’s not really skin, is it?’ Dylan asks as we press our palms against it, hoping our magic will do the rest of the work and let us in without giving us away to Ganymede. I’ve been trying to focus on the idea of us being invisible, to see if we can use her trick against her. If we can avoid her, this will be all the easier.
‘No, it can’t be. She probably made it feel that way to discourage people,’ I whisper as the door gives beneath our touch, swinging open to reveal the huge entrance hall, shelves covered in snowglobes on every side.
I start forward on tiptoe, hushing the globes as I pass, and I think it’s going well until I look around and see Dylan isn’t with me.
‘Dylan?’
The mist has crept through the door, the hall is quickly clouding up and I can’t see him.
‘I’m here,’ he says. His eyes are hollow with shock; his face slack with it.
‘What’s wrong?’ I ask, pulling him along towards the stairs.
‘This place!’ he whispers. ‘I had no idea how big it is. I barely registered it when we came through before. There are so many, Clem. And they’re all prisons? Is there a magician in every single one?’
I nod, trying to get him to the stairs before we’re discovered. Apart from anything else, I don’t think he’d cope with Ganymede in full-on moth-swish mode right now.
‘And you knew all this and you still came in to get me . . . You must have known we might never find our way out again!’
‘That’s why we didn’t go straight back after,’ I whisper. ‘It’s fine. We’re going to fix it.’
‘We are,’ he says, as if to convince himself.
You are? comes a tide of whispers, a rumble that strikes at us deep within, as the figures within the globes rush to watch us pass. Somewhere, Ganymede is stirring. I can feel the charge in the air, the snap of tension tha
t builds around her when she’s disturbed. A footstep, the query of a far-off voice. Portia prowls past us, and my skin erupts into amber static. Dylan pulls away, wincing, and the globes around us start to turn in a tide of confusion.
We’ll sort it, I promise to the sea of tiny faces staring at us from behind the glass globes. But we can’t let Ganymede find us here now. She’ll stop us, and we’ll never get another chance then. Distract her. Don’t let her know we’re here!
‘You think you can walk in here and turn them all to your side?’ Ganymede demands, flying down the stairs towards us, her eyes sparking. ‘You think you can hide in my own house?’ She cackles, moths swirling in the air around her. ‘Silly children; you have walked into the trap all by yourselves.’
‘No,’ I say.
No! they roar around us.
‘What do you mean, no?’ she demands, looking imperiously from us to the globes as the fog lifts.
You are not the only mistress here, says a tiny single voice, ghostlike in the sudden silence. The new one is strong, and she does not stand alone, as you do. Maybe she can bring this whole place down. You think we will not help her to that end?
‘Oh, be quiet,’ she says, looking down with a frown as Portia winds around her ankles, hobbling her. ‘You have no power here: you are prisoners!’
‘We’re not,’ Dylan says, standing tall beside me. His voice doesn’t quake, his hands don’t tremble and his magic is a rush of energy all around him.
‘But you were, and you can be again,’ says Ganymede, her nostrils flaring.
‘Where is she?’ I ask, my voice thin.
She stares at me.
‘What did you do with her, Ganymede?’
‘Nothing,’ she says, but she doesn’t sound so sure now. New lines appear on her face as cracks rush up the walls of the house. ‘I did nothing wrong. Everything I ever did was in pursuit of safety, of keeping things under control!’
‘Why did you do it?’ I ask, through the hammer of my heart. ‘Where did you put her, Ganymede? Where did you lock my mother?’ It comes out as a screech, full of rage and my own unpredictable magic, and it rings through the house, echoing bell-like off all the glass, reaching to the highest ceiling.
We stare at each other, and I see it in her face: there is no more hiding, no more doubt. Finally she knows I am Callisto’s daughter; truly she believes it.
And it shatters her.
She crumples before us, moths fluttering out in every direction, and she doesn’t look like Ganymede at all, as she lands at the bottom of the stairs. In this moment she is not tall and strong. She is not beautiful. She is wilted, the iron melting away until she’s as scared and as flawed as anyone else.
‘I didn’t know,’ she says, looking at me with eyes awash with tears, as wide and bright as the moon. ‘I told you before – I didn’t know she’d had a child! She came to me, so tired, so sad. The world out there was brutal to my dearest heart, and I could not bear to see her age, or fade. She was our baby, and we both doted on her, and so I put her away to be with Io, to keep her safe for a while. Io must have a hand in this as well, for I didn’t trap Callisto there! I thought she’d come back when she’d gained strength from Io – they were always so close – but she never did. Io must have tricked her, kept her there – and when I went to find her she had gone.’
She stands clumsily, puts a thin hand on one of the banisters. ‘I tried to find her! I wanted to bring her out; I’d made such a terrible mistake. But she was not there. She was not there, Clementine! What could I do?’ She sweeps out past us to the globes, peering into one after the other. ‘I cannot find her. I do not know where else to look, and I could not leave this house to go in there. Io has hidden her away!’
She carries on searching, her long skirts sweeping the tiles, swirling out around her, fists clenched by her sides, and Dylan grabs my arm as the cracks in the walls begin to multiply, like the new branches on a tree, spiralling out, creeping ever higher.
‘We need to get in there,’ he says. ‘Quickly, before she comes back to her senses. We need to go and find Io, and get her to tell us.’
‘I don’t know where to get in!’ I say, feeling a little like Ganymede, breathless with fear and feelings buried deep for too long.
‘Focus,’ Dylan says. ‘We need to get on the other side of all this.’
‘No,’ whispers Ganymede. ‘No. I cannot let you. I cannot let you loose to enter all these prisons and stir up all these souls. They are content as they are; you will bring chaos!’ She stares at us, and begins to mutter to herself. ‘The boy, perhaps, can be contained, but Clementine – she is strong as copper. Strong as the sun, and the moon, and the Earth together – strong as any of us. What will she do? What . . .’
Suddenly the air begins to thicken again. With a whisper from the globes, the fog closes in. Ganymede shrieks, and Dylan and I run up the stairs, down corridors where whole worlds call out our names, and up to that attic room. Footsteps come hard after us, and there is no more time, there are no more chances.
I show Dylan where I first found him, and we put our hands against the glass of his globe. My mother’s ring glows. A needle flash of bright burning goes through me, Dylan is wrenched away and I’m spinning, flying through the air, landing on the hard ice, my breath caught in my chest. A bleak, cloud-filled sky fills the horizon. A bitter wind riffles through my clothes. I am back in the world where I found him, winded and spooked by everything that just happened.
And there is no house this time. There is no Dylan to stop me slipping down the mountainside. There is no Helios to bound over and warm my feet.
I am alone, snow falling in great folds over me as I crash into the glass barrier, banging my head against the transparent wall that divides me from reality.
I watch her fall down the hillside and I know that feeling, I know the way the ice stings, snow clinging in great swathes until you’re too cold to think, too cold to move. I know it, even as I watch it happen, even as Ganymede claws me back away from the globe.
‘You!’ she cries. ‘I will keep you, and she will return to me. I will be able to explain.’
‘You can’t,’ I say, pulling away from her. ‘You can’t keep me, and you can never explain!’
‘But I must! She must understand it was for the best, it was for safety, for the world. I put away the magic, and Io was free to rule in there. It was the deal we two made, when Callisto left us. I told her I would never interfere in there, if she left the real work to me. I put Callisto in that day because she needed comfort, and they were always so close.’ She sighs. ‘I didn’t think Io would keep her there against her will!
‘ You took away Clem’s mother, and you left her in there all this time. You didn’t check, did you? She hasn’t known her for ten years. She doesn’t remember how she looks, the smell of her, the way she feels when she holds her . . .’My eyes blur as I think of my dad, of all the times I’ve imagined us together again. ‘You can’t ever make that better.’
‘I didn’t know she had a child! Time means nothing in there. It would have meant nothing to Callisto, except that Clementine has aged, and there is nothing I can do about that! If I put them away together, if I weave magic around them, maybe then . . . maybe they can make it better in there . . . They can build a whole world together. Maybe I can make it right.’ She stares from me to the globes around us, as if searching for the perfect place to make a little paradise.
‘No,’ I say. ‘No more hiding. No more pretending. You’ll just have to say you’re sorry.’
‘Say I’m sorry?’ Her voice breaks. ‘How will that be enough? Clementine is strong – she will find Callisto and, between them, who knows what they might do to this place? They could set free every one of them, and then what?’
‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘You’ll have to figure it out.’ And I turn back to the globe, just as Clem is rising, slipping on the ice, as she puts her hands against the glass to catch her balance. I put my hand on the globe a
nd I close my eyes and I go back, back to the place where I lost myself, where I lost hours, and days, maybe months of my life. I go back there.
But I am not the same now.
I am magic, through and through. And so is she.
‘Dylan!’ I’ve never been so pleased to see anyone. I rush at him and we go flying into the snow. I feel as if I’ve been here for hours already, but I know it can’t be that long. It was probably just a moment out there.
‘What happened?’ I ask, scrambling up and brushing the snow off my jumper.
He climbs up slower, avoiding my eye.
‘Dylan?’
‘Ganymede grabbed me,’ he says. ‘That’s all.’
‘No it isn’t!’
‘OK, well, she also threatened to lock you up with your mother so you could live in some dream where none of this ever happened, and I told her to get lost. And then I got in.’
I stare at him.
‘Not that it changes anything,’ he says, ‘but I’ve never seen anyone look so guilty before.’
‘She—’ I burst angrily.
‘I know,’ he interrupts. He looks tired already. ‘I know what she did. I know how it feels to be without someone. I told her so. The good thing is we’re here, and we know for sure your mum is here somewhere too.’ He shivers, looking around. ‘I can’t believe I actually opted to come back in here. It’s so bleak.’
‘I think my tree brightens it a little bit,’ I say, sweeping my hand out to the tangle of roots that leads up the hill to the silver-grey tree nodding in the wind. As I look at it, tiny buds begin to grow along the branches. Quickly they are blossoms, which curl and flutter down the hill, and then, as my magic swells, small pale globes appear.
‘What are those?’ Dylan whispers.
‘Fruit!’ I gasp, watching as they swell, white as snow. In moments they ripen, and break from the tree, rolling down towards us. I pick one up and hand it to Dylan. ‘Try it!’
He grimaces. ‘You made them with your mind!’
‘So?’
‘They might be a bit bitter,’ he says, but his eyes are laughing, and when he takes a bite he doesn’t immediately fall to the ground, poisoned. He just chews, for a long time, watching me.