‘Thirty-eight! Thirty-seven! Thirty-six!’
And then Emerald said, ‘Come on,’ ducked down, and slipped under the barrier.
Horrified, Jess scrambled after her, scurrying round the edge of the stone circle. Luckily, they were in the shadowed zone at the edge of the floodlights, and nobody appeared to have seen them.
The girls took cover behind the nearest of the stones. Jess, certain that they were about to get caught at any moment, could hear her own ragged breath and could feel her heart pounding against her ribcage.
The stone felt cold and rough, even through her jeans.
Professor Ulverston stood, arms folded, before the opening to the tunnel, laughing delightedly to himself. Monitors next to him gave readouts which Jess couldn’t make out, and which she knew she wouldn’t have been able to understand anyway.
‘Thirty! Twenty-nine! Twenty-eight!’
Jess was about to move again, but Emerald’s hand was on her shoulder. Emerald shook her head firmly, and pointed.
Something was flitting among the stones. It was small, black, agile. Jess’s eyes widened and she felt her spine tingling as she recognised the cat. The one which had spoken to her. It trotted towards them, eyes shining, and the jewel inset on its collar gleaming a bright green.
The green jewel. Something clicked in Jess’s mind.
‘Twenty-one! Twenty! Nineteen!’
The cat suddenly bolted across the stone circle and leapt into Emerald Greene’s outstretched arms.
‘Calm, Anoushka,’ said Emerald Greene in a soft, soothing voice, stroking its dark fur. ‘Calm.’
‘Eighteen! Seventeen! Sixteen!’
Jessica stared. Her mind boggled. ‘It’s yours,’ she said in astonishment, looking from Emerald to the purring cat and back to Emerald again. ‘Yours!’ she exclaimed again.
The cat lifted its head and stared at Jess, its eyes shining with the reflection of the stone circle.
And then it spoke again.
‘Of course she’s mine,’ the cat drawled haughtily. ‘What other possible explanation did you think there was, hmmm?’
Professor Edwin Ulverston clasped his hands together and gazed upon the pitted surface of the western keystone. The Ten Sisters were silent like ghosts, seeming to watch the elated crowd as they counted down the final seconds on the TV screen.
‘Ten!’
‘Nine!’
‘Eight!’
There was, suddenly, a helicopter flying overhead. It appeared swiftly, like a bolt of living darkness, clattering out of the sky above the distant city. Most of the people watching assumed it was somehow connected with the television broadcast, and waved their candles in the air.
‘My life’s work,’ said Ulverston softly, but just loud enough for the microphone clipped to his lapel to pick it up for the viewers. ‘My life’s achievement!’
‘Seven!’
‘Six!’
The helicopter, getting nearer and louder, zoomed across the moorland and came to hover directly above the Ten Sisters.
‘Five!’
‘Four!’
Jess, down behind the stone, suddenly found herself pulled away by Emerald Greene. She lost her footing and went rolling over and over, everything becoming a blur of faces and grass and sky.
The smell of mud filled her nostrils and then she slammed up hard against something which knocked the breath from her.
Ulverston was lifting his arms, looking up into the sky.
‘Three!’
‘Two!’
Ulverston appeared for the first time to see the helicopter hovering there. For a second, he wavered. He looked uncertain.
But it was too late now.
‘One!’
‘Zero!’
For a moment, nothing happened. The audience held its breath. A second later, there was a cavernous BOOM from beneath the ground.
A sky-shaking cheer went up from the crowd. And then, out of the tunnel-mouth flashed what could have been a bolt of lightning - only its colour was an angry crimson.
The TV cameras caught it all.
The horrified crowd, shrinking back, watched on the big screens as it happened.
The bolt of fire struck the keystone, turning it bright red in an instant like a burning coal. There was a whoomph like a gigantic flame being lit - and then the stone screamed.
The sound, ancient and terrifying, echoed across the moors. People clamped their hands to their ears.
Glowing within a column of light, the stone flickered with tendrils of lightning. They spread across the circle in a filigree web, smashing into each of the stones in turn and suffusing them with radiance. There was a harsh, crackling noise like a raging bonfire, and then one by one, the stones began to glow - cherry-red, then vermilion, then a bright orange.
The tall figure of Professor Edwin Ulverston stood for a second in defiance, his arms held aloft. His big eyes opened wide and his toothy smile, fixed across his face, seemed to turn into a grimace of sheer panic.
The light blazed, and the filigree web crackled upwards, encircling Ulverston like ivy round a tree. Ulverston struggled helplessly, but the light seemed alive, snaking upwards and entwining itself around his body.
It flared up like a Chinese firework - and when the flame guttered and fell, the Professor had completely vanished.
Part Two
A Gathering of Shadows
4
Rubicon House
Jess awoke.
Her head hurt, and she could hear a sound, like an engine. It was throbbing through her, making her shake.
Rubbing her eyes, she sat up, aware now that a tartan blanket covered her. She was lying on the back seat of an old camper-van, and as she slowly came to, she could see familiar countryside rolling past - trees, hills, farmland. It was before dawn, to judge by the grey light and the dark blue sky. The van smelt of petrol and pear-drops, and up at the front - at the wheel, a big, old-fashioned steering-wheel emblazoned with a VW symbol - was Emerald Greene.
Jess sat bolt upright. ‘Stop! Let me out!’ she shouted angrily. ‘Where are you taking me?’ She pummelled the back of the driver’s seat in anger.
Emerald, unflustered, changed gear, with a horrible crunching sound which seemed to shake every panel of the camper-van.
‘Well,’ she called over her shoulder, ‘so this is how you express your gratitude to me for saving your life, Jessica Mathieson? And please stop that thumping, or you will cause me to crash.’
‘But where are we going?’ Jess asked miserably, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. She was cold and tired, her body was sore in every limb, and she was suddenly aware that her stomach ached with hunger.
‘To a place of safety,’ Emerald said, and the van lurched as it cut through a swathe of mud and started to rumble up a dirt track.
Jess looked up, taking in Emerald’s earlier comment. ‘Just a minute. Saving my life?’
‘That is correct.’ Emerald glanced in the rear-view mirror. ‘We were in a very dangerous place beside the stones. I should have realised it.’
Everything came rushing back.
Professor Ulverston.
The countdown.
The red lightning dancing round the stones, and the sudden panic as she rolled away, away -
‘What happened back there?’ Jess asked in astonishment.
‘Severe temporal disturbance,’ said Emerald casually. ‘That, I am afraid, is what happens if you go poking into old places that are best left alone.’
‘And what about me? I was out cold!’
‘No, you were just in shock, that is all. A little dazed. Luckily, I had my Dormobile nearby, so I was able to get us both out of there before the authorities arrived.’
‘And... is
everybody all right? Gabi, Richie?’
‘Do not concern yourself. Everybody is unharmed.’
Jess frowned, shaking her head. ‘But Professor Ulverston! It absorbed him! It was horrible, like... black magic, or something.’
Emerald clicked her tongue and shook her head. ‘No, no, no. Think about it. Magic is just science by another name.’
‘It is?’ Jess asked dubiously, struggling to clear her dull head.
‘Of course! If a 14th-Century peasant saw a car, a computer or a television, he would have no rational explanation for it, would he? He would call it devil’s work. Sorcery, or magic. Any sufficiently advanced technology will, to the untrained eye, be indistinguishable from magic.’
‘The untrained eye being mine, I suppose?’ she said sarcastically. ‘Thanks. So kind of you to compare me to a medieval peasant, Emerald.’
‘Merely a parallel,’ said a clipped voice from floor-level.
Jessica jumped.
A dark, furry head popped up from under the back seat. It was the cat.
‘It’s perfectly all right,’ said the cat. Emerald had called it Anoushka, Jess remembered - a girl’s name, although the languid, actorish voice sounded neither male nor female. The cat arched its back and sternly fixed her with its unblinking gaze. ‘Come, now, don’t be so touchy,’ it said. ‘Anyone would think I wanted to bite you, or something.’ It tutted in disapproval, trotted to the front of the Dormobile and hopped on the passenger seat.
‘Sorry,’ said Jess. Then she added in her head: I can’t believe I just said that.
Well, she thought, either she was going crazy or she had to start accepting all this. Several hours ago, at a guess, she had seen the world’s leading Professor of Archaeology disappear in a pillar of flame. Now she was stuck in a rattling Dormobile with a girl of her own age who somehow knew how to drive. Her fellow passenger was a talking cat, and the girl was apparently able to pass at will through something called a - what was it - chronostatic barrier?
There was weird, and there was really weird, and then there was too weird.
‘Take the phenomena you call ghosts, for example,’ said Emerald, as the Dormobile emerged from the track onto an even bumpier woodland path. ’Are you aware that the city is teeming with traces of their activity?’
‘Ghosts?’ Jess felt her skin crawl.
‘Or more accurately, intrusions of temporal-psychic instability.’
‘Intrusions of whatty-what?’
‘Listen. The fabric of Time is like a patchwork quilt. Every so often, something pokes itself through that quilt and starts to unravel the threads.’ Jess saw Emerald smile briefly in the rear-view mirror. ‘It is my job to put them back together.’
‘Your job... Is that why you’re always poking around in the tarmac, and playing with pendulums?’
‘Precisely. I have been tracing the temporal fields in those areas. You would not notice, because you are not sensitive to these phenomena, but in any space where there has been a break, local time slows down fractionally... The best way to see it is by checking the density of the surfaces, or testing the Earth’s gravity in that space.’
Suddenly, Jess realised the van was slowing, and that they were back in the woods on the shore of the Darkwater - in the same clearing where she and Richie had seen Emerald disappear.
‘So,’ Jess said, ‘am I about to get some answers?’
‘Oh, how tedious,’ said Anoushka the cat, glancing out of the window and then settling down to lick his paws. ‘Have we got to explain?’ He flipped his tail back and forth and bared his teeth at Emerald. ‘I really find that part rather tiresome.’
Jess looked down at the cat, then back up at Emerald. ‘Actually, yes, some explanations would be good. You say you’ve never been to school, but you seem to know an awful lot of complicated science. So? Where are you from?’
‘Not now,’ said Emerald Greene. ‘Another time.’ The Dormobile had come to a halt in the centre of the clearing, and Emerald turned round in her seat. ‘How do you feel?’ she asked.
‘Hungry. Confused. Frightened,’ admitted Jess.
‘Good!’ said Emerald with a firm smile. ‘Now, what happened to Professor Ulverston is the key to the whole thing. I believe, now, that I know what we are dealing with.’
‘You do?’ Jess was astonished. ‘How did you work that out?’
Emerald ignored her question. ‘And if I am right, it worries me greatly. I am going to find out, Jessica Mathieson, because it is my business to find out things like this.’
‘She makes it her business,’ interjected the cat. ‘Personally, I’d give anything for a bowl of cream and a quiet life, but there you are.’ He carried on licking his paws.
‘I may need your help,’ Emerald went on. ‘Do you think you will be able to help me?’
‘I... don’t know,’ said Jess uncertainly. ‘Right now I’m cold and hungry, and I want to go home.’
‘Worry not - I have some culinary ability. I shall organise you a cooked breakfast.’
Wrinkling her nose, Jess looked around the cramped interior of the VW Dormobile. ‘Right... You’ve got a Primus stove tucked away somewhere, have you?’
Jess could have sworn that the cat sniggered. She turned and gave it a hard stare - or at least she tried to. Anoushka met her gaze, his eyes unblinking, and after a second or two Jess’s eyes were stinging so much she had to blink and look away.
‘Better than that.’ Emerald turned to face forwards again, revved the engine. ‘I suggest you hold on to something. Oh, and - my apologies - you may feel slightly sick for a second or two.’
Jess was about to ask why, but she didn’t get a chance.
Emerald revved the engine.
She lifted the clutch.
A second later, the Dormobile shot off, the engine roaring, every part of the vehicle shaking like an old washing-machine on its spin-cycle. Jess gasped, just managing to grab hold of the foldaway table beside the back seat, and she caught sight of the speedometer climbing beyond sixty in just a few seconds.
One moment they were rocketing forward - and the next, they smacked full-tilt into something soft.
It sounded fluid.
Globules of blue light washed over the windscreen and enveloped the van, rippling its surface, making it seem as if they were inside a giant lava-lamp. Jessica had the sudden, unpleasant sensation of leaving her stomach behind - worse than the Nemesis at Alton Towers, she thought briefly. Then, she tasted something familiar in the air - something cold and metallic - and she remembered it from before, from the time when she and Richie had seen Emerald disappear right here.
The sound of the engine seemed to slow and wobble as if on a mangled tape, then zipped back up to speed again. The blue wall snapped shut behind them with a loud, echoing schloooooop-pop! and the van landed on the ground with a jolt that slammed the suspension and shook every bone in Jess’s body.
The Dormobile slowly stopped vibrating. Jess’s mouth was dry and tasted horribly metallic. Her body was trembling, and she didn’t dare open her eyes.
‘You may as well look,’ said Emerald.
So she did.
And she couldn’t believe it.
Swallowing hard and blinking, Jess saw that they were no longer in a forest clearing at dawn. The Dormobile, its engine purring quietly, sat in the sunlight of early afternoon. Before them stretched rich green privet hedges, a line of creamy-white Greek statues and green lawns lined with beds of carnations and yellow roses. Beyond the grass was a stone fountain set into a gravel forecourt, sparkling with silvery jets of water. And further back still, Jess could see a beautiful Georgian house, its walls festooned with scarlet creeper and its windows glittering with honey-gold sunlight.
‘Welcome to my home,’ said Emerald. ‘Welcome to Rubicon House.’
He was shading his eyes, as the stone circle crackled with red light...
A grandstand view of the hordes, a human tide streaming away from the stones...
Spectators shrieking, running as fast as their legs could carry them back towards their cars and coaches and buses...
Mike Devenish, standing amid the chaos with his microphone, looking in vain for a functioning camera.
When Jessica hadn’t turned up after two hours, and policemen in yellow jerkins were efficiently finishing off clearing the area, Gabi had, in a panic, collared the nearest police officers and asked them if they’d seen her. The two nodded sympathetically, took some brief notes, and told her to go home and get some sleep. One of them asked how old the young lady was - and when Gabi said thirteen, the two policemen had exchanged a knowing look before giving her a reassuring smile. ‘Nine times out of ten, kids just turn up the next day. You go home and wait, miss.’
Richie thought he knew better.
He could hear rooks cawing overhead and scuttling of woodland creatures in the undergrowth. He glanced around nervously.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Nothing ventured...’
He tried to flex his hands and crack his knuckles, like his older brother Tom could. It just hurt. He winced and rubbed his hand, thinking that he wouldn’t try that again. He positioned himself centrally, then put his hands out in front of him, palms flat, as if feeling his way in the dark.
Nothing at first. He moved forward a few centimetres.
Still nothing.
Richie had an idea. He rummaged through his pockets until he found something he didn’t particularly want - a packet of Extra Strong Mints which had been there about three weeks. He peeled the paper back and took off the top sweet, holding it between thumb and forefinger.
Emerald Greene and the Witch Stones Page 6