Reluctantly, Darcy loosened his grip. Helena rubbed her sore wrist.
“Vera?” I asked.
“She was in Year Twelve at the time and—well, she was my girlfriend,” said Darcy quietly. “We soon realized we weren’t compatible and we didn’t stay together very long. But I was pretty besotted with her at first, and I…” He cleared his throat. “I spent too much time with Vera and not enough with my sister.”
“I see,” I said, and felt jealousy start to gnaw at me. This was just great—we hadn’t even had our first kiss yet, and here we were talking about Darcy’s ex! But in the grand scheme of things, it didn’t really matter. I had bigger problems right now. And at least this explained why Darcy had been so distracted four years ago, and why Gina had found it so hard to talk to him. “It would have been a good idea to search that cave this morning,” I remarked.
“Yes, I should have thought of that,” Darcy murmured, as I turned back to Helena.
“So where’s Frederick now?” I asked.
Helena shrugged. “He followed me through the woods—still going on about the book—and then just as we got near the old monastery I suddenly realized he wasn’t behind me anymore. The last thing I heard him say was it’s about time they found a body, or something like that. But when I turned around he was gone.” She shuddered. “And then I freaked out and ran all the way back here.”
Darcy and I stared at each other, and I knew the same thought was in both of our minds.
“Do you think…?” I blurted out.
Darcy gave a brusque nod.
Then we ran.
December 2013
Again I sit here alone and write
As I await the final act,
I drown in secret scribbled words
That may be fiction or may be fact.
In this book of a thousand places
There is no place for this lonely girl,
And nothing left to do but hope
Either for death, or the end of the world.
16
We ran through the dark wood. Branches snapped under our feet, and twigs clawed at my face in the darkness. But we couldn’t waste time looking for a path. There wasn’t even time to think. We just had to run, faster than we’d ever run in our lives.
It was a matter of life or death.
Literally.
Darcy crashed through the undergrowth ahead of me and reached the ruins first. I saw him disappear down what had once been the church nave.
I followed.
There were two possibilities: Either Gina was dead, or she was at the end of the world, wherever that might be. She’d mentioned both options in the chronicle, so they were both equally possible and equally likely. Gina’s life hung in the balance.
But if Frederick had decided he wanted Gina’s body to be discovered, the balance would tip conclusively in that direction the moment he committed the words to paper. There was no knowing exactly how it would happen, but one thing was for certain: If Frederick wrote in the chronicle that Gina was already dead and that someone was going to find her body, it would be her death sentence. There would be no going back.
Darcy and I sprinted along the aisle toward the statue of the faun. The secret staircase had been opened, but Frederick was sitting cross-legged on one of the weathered tombstones beside it. The book was in his lap, lit by a flashlight, and he was scribbling something in it. Even when we stopped just a few yards away from him, he didn’t look up. Was he so engrossed in what he was doing that he hadn’t even noticed us?
“There you are!” he murmured, just as I’d decided to make the most of the element of surprise and snatch the book out of his hands.
Frederick greeted us with his usual wry smile. “I was wondering when you two were going to show up,” he said. “Luckily, I’ve already figured out how this thing works. Just in time.”
He lowered his pen to the paper again.
“Stop!” cried Darcy. “Don’t do this! Wait!”
Frederick frowned. “What?” he said. At the same moment, Darcy and I launched ourselves at him. Somehow, whatever it took, we were going to get that book away from him.
But Frederick had turned his gaze back to the chronicle, where he’d already written several words on the next blank page. “I could write any name I want here in the time it takes you to get to me,” he said calmly, almost casually.
Darcy froze, rooted to the spot, and held me back, too. I squinted at the book in Frederick’s lap, trying to read the words upside down. It wasn’t easy to decipher his handwriting, but eventually I managed to make out what he’d written: At last, the mortal remains of …
I gasped. He was about to write Gina’s name; the pen nib was almost touching the paper.
“Are you crazy?” I screamed. “You’ll kill her!”
“Oh, really?” said Frederick.
“I thought you understood how the book worked? That everything you write in it comes true? For God’s sake!”
Frederick grinned. “Of course I understand. At first I did have trouble believing all those fairy stories you told me on our way back from the pub, Emma. But then I asked Hannah about it, and her reaction was so intriguing that I thought I might as well give it a try—I had nothing to lose, after all.” His grin grew even wider. “Interesting weather we’ve been having today, isn’t it?” The flashlight in his lap illuminated his face from below, bathing it in a ghostly light. Had Frederick gone mad? What was he planning?
“Please,” I pleaded. “Don’t do anything stupid! That book is more dangerous than you think!”
Frederick tilted his head and looked at me. “You don’t know what I think, Emma. You don’t know what happened that night four years ago. You didn’t even know Gina. So do us a favor and stay out of it!”
I gave him a piercing stare. “I found the book. I’m the one who’s been studying it, I’m the one who knows best out of all of us how to use it. I’m the one who realized Gina had been writing in it,” I hissed.
“And it’s my sister’s life we’re talking about here,” said Darcy quietly.
Then Frederick tipped back his head and started to laugh, loudly and without warning. His voice echoed around the monastery walls and seemed to linger in the trees. Was I imagining it, or had the night just turned a shade blacker? Was the darkness closing in around us? A sudden gust of wind brushed my skin like the icy breath of a stranger.
Instinctively, I moved closer to Darcy. I felt the warmth of his body against mine, and I felt him trembling with rage. “Enough of this bullshit,” he growled, and at that Frederick fell silent and stared into our faces as he lowered his pen to the paper and started writing a capital G.
Then he spoke. “You have no idea what it’s like to be someone like me,” he said abruptly. “I’ve always had to fight for everything. My family isn’t rich, my dad isn’t a famous academic and headmaster. If something goes wrong for me, I’m screwed. I don’t have money or a family name to fall back on. People like me aren’t allowed to make mistakes. We can’t afford to. We can’t afford to even be suspected of doing something wrong, do you see? And your darling sister, Darcy—she used me. She risked everything I’d worked so hard for!” He practically spat the last few words. “Yes, I pretended to be that faun she was always going on about. For a laugh. I didn’t know she was going to take the whole thing so seriously. I thought it was just going to be a private joke between us, a bit of fun.”
He formed the curve of the G.
“But it wasn’t my fault she had a screw loose! That she was dumb enough to actually believe all that rubbish! It wasn’t my fault she went and fell in love with me, and thought she had to save me from some tragic fate.”
“She must have been devastated when she found out you’d been lying to her the whole time,” I said.
Frederick raised his eyebrows. “Just because you felt that way, doesn’t mean—”
“Oh, shut up! I don’t give a flip about you!”
“That’s pretty much w
hat Gina said. And then she used her little book to make me row her out onto the river. I didn’t want to, but it was like I was on autopilot or something. Now I see why. The chronicle was controlling me. It forced me to take Gina out in that boat and watch her jump overboard. She wanted me to get the blame for her death,” he said bitterly. “For four years I’ve lived in fear that someday, someone will uncover some evidence against me. That I’ll be accused of a crime I didn’t commit, and my whole life will be ruined. But not anymore. I’m going to make sure her body is found in the underground tunnels, and I’m going to make it look like an accident. You should be grateful I’m fishing her bones out of the river for you, Darcy. At least now you can finally bury her.”
Frederick extended the curve of the G a little, but he got no further because Darcy let out a roar like a wounded animal and charged straight at him. “Murderer!” he bellowed, throwing caution to the wind. “MURDERER!”
“Darcy!” I cried. “She might still be alive! If the chronicle can make pink mice fall from the sky, then who knows—anything could have happened! Maybe Gina jumped out of the boat but didn’t drown—maybe she got swallowed up by a giant fish and carried off to the other side of the world or something. Like in ‘Jonah and the Whale.’ Darcy!”
But Darcy wasn’t listening—he and Frederick were now just a tangle of kicking, punching limbs. I remembered, not all that long ago, wondering which of them would win in a fight. But nothing could have been further from my mind now. All I could think of was Gina and the very, very slim chance that she had survived. That she was out there somewhere, alive, waiting for her brother to find her.
Darcy and Frederick were rolling around on the ground now, dangerously close to the underground staircase. Frederick had fastened his hands around Darcy’s neck and was trying to strangle him. Darcy landed a punch on Frederick’s nose. Frederick groaned and rammed his knee into Darcy’s stomach. But Darcy hardly seemed to notice—he didn’t even flinch. He was delirious with rage. A vein pulsed at his temple, and he didn’t take his eyes off Frederick for a second. Then I heard a metallic crack as something smashed against the stone pedestal of the statue. There was a sound of splintering glass, and the flashlight went out. Frederick and Darcy became a dark, shapeless, grappling mass.
And where was the chronicle?
I groped frantically along the ground. Damn it! If only I’d thought to do this before, when I could still see! The chronicle must have been around here somewhere: Frederick must surely have dropped it in the tussle. I crawled closer and closer to him and Darcy, feeling moss and stone under my palms. And then my fingertips found the cloth binding! I snatched the chronicle up from the ground where it lay.
And then I ran.
I knew I couldn’t stay there any longer watching them fight. Although I’d flinched at every blow Darcy had received, at the end of the day it didn’t matter who won this brawl. All that mattered right now was saving Gina.
And so, forcing myself not to look back at Darcy and Frederick, I entered the underground staircase. I didn’t so much run as tumble down the steps, before charging blindly along the passageway that led to the castle. I hoped that was where it led, anyway: It was pitch black down here, as if I’d fallen headfirst into an inkwell, and I couldn’t see a thing. There could have been anything at all in the thick darkness on either side of me—a sheer drop, or a fairy kingdom—and I wouldn’t have been any the wiser. I groped my way along the rough stone wall with one hand, and clutched the book to my chest with the other. My heart hammered against the book’s worn binding through the thin fabric of my shirt, and little by little my fingers turned numb with the cold. I stumbled on, barely noticing when I grazed my shoulder on the rocky walls or stubbed my toe on the ground. I had to get the book somewhere safe, and fast. I racked my brains feverishly, trying to think of the best place to hide it.
Under my pillow wouldn’t do, obviously. Nor would anywhere else in my and Hannah’s room. That was bound to be the first place Frederick would look. What about the west wing library? Wouldn’t the best thing be to put the chronicle back in its secret compartment and pretend I’d never seen it? But even that probably wouldn’t be secure enough: After all, it wasn’t long ago that somebody had come in and searched the library from top to bottom, pulling every piece of furniture in the room apart.…
As I went on, my breath and my footsteps started to echo in the air. Suddenly I could no longer feel the wall beneath my fingertips. I must have reached the lord of Stolzenburg’s laboratory. This gave me an idea: Perhaps I could find somewhere to hide the book in here!
I slowed down, came to an unsteady stop, and felt in my jacket pocket for my phone. It filled the underground room with a bluish glow as I switched it on … and almost dropped it again in my shock.
I was standing, as I’d thought, in the secret laboratory. To my left were the workbenches, piled high with dusty apparatus, and a few yards farther on I could see the copper basin filled with little leaves. Beyond that was the entrance to the other secret passage, the one that led to the west wing of the castle. No surprises there.
But what I hadn’t been expecting to see was a new tunnel.
Directly behind the copper basin, yet another passageway had opened up in the wall. It was slightly narrower than the others. Narrower and darker. As I moved closer to it, the light from my phone revealed more of the little silver leaves—hundreds of thousands of them.
Where did this new tunnel lead? “New” to me, at least: The tunnel itself was clearly anything but new. It looked even older than the alchemist’s laboratory I was standing in. Its stone walls were darker in color than the other walls and somehow smoother, worn down by the breath of the centuries. There were cast-iron torch brackets set into the walls at regular intervals, and some of them still contained lumps of charred wood covered in soot.
I wondered whether there was a secret lever that I’d accidentally pressed while I was stumbling through the darkness. How else could the tunnel have been opened? Or perhaps there was a lever somewhere above ground, and Darcy and Frederick had fallen against it while they were fighting? Either way, I was glad to see this new tunnel.
Very glad, in fact.
I didn’t have the faintest idea what I would find at the end of it, but I was sure it would make the perfect hiding place for my precious cargo. Yes—this was exactly what I’d been looking for. I stepped resolutely into the tunnel, and followed the trail of leaves into the unfamiliar darkness.
The light from my phone bobbed along the ground ahead of me. My heart was still pounding in my chest. From somewhere far behind me I heard Darcy and Frederick shouting, and the sound of running footsteps. Were they chasing each other through the tunnels?
Now the rocky walls began to narrow; the silvery leaves rustled under my feet and the smell of damp earth grew stronger and stronger the farther on I went. After a while I realized that the color of the light in the tunnel was changing: the bluish glow from my phone was being eclipsed by a warmer light, one that flickered and danced. Eventually, the tunnel turned a corner, and as I rounded the bend I saw that there were flaming torches mounted on the walls every few yards or so, lighting the way. Only now did I see the footsteps in the dust. They were identical to the ones Darcy and I had seen the day we’d discovered the secret laboratory.
Perhaps Gina was somewhere nearby after all? I sped up, almost breaking into a run, and didn’t stop until the tunnel suddenly opened onto another room—or rather, a chamber—or was it a cave? It wasn’t man-made, at any rate.
I tipped my head back and gazed up at the roof, which, now that I was out of the tunnel, arched high above my head. Glittering conical rock formations hung down from the cave ceiling, long and jagged, and similar formations stretched up from the ground toward them. They sparkled like prisms, and I wandered amongst them openmouthed. This was magical. I’d never been in a stalactite cave before, but I’d seen them on TV and I knew that this cave must be one of the most beautiful of its kind in the
world.
The silvery leaves shimmered even brighter now; there were so many of them that they’d formed a soft, thick carpet on the ground. The footsteps I’d been following had vanished beneath them. The leaves seemed to multiply as I got closer to the center of the cave, and at last I came to a kind of pit in the ground that was overflowing with them, like a rustling silver sea. Standing at the edge of the pit, I found the source of the mysterious footprints.
“Emma,” she greeted me serenely, and smiled.
Instinctively I pressed the book closer to my chest. “Who are you?” I whispered.
“That’s a good question,” Miss Whitfield replied. “It is the right question, the first question you should ask. I will answer your question, and then you will give me the chronicle.” She spoke as matter-of-factly as if she’d been explaining a piece of homework. As always, she was wearing a long dark dress, high-necked and hopelessly old-fashioned. As if it came from a different era. She was holding something I couldn’t quite identify, something small and white and fragile-looking.…
“You!” I cried, starting angrily toward Miss Whitfield. “You’re the faun, aren’t you? You’ve been deceiving us all this time. You’re not really a teacher. You want the book for yourself. To break your curse, and set you free. I recognized you in that old photo.”
Miss Whitfield shook her head. She opened her mouth to reply, but at that moment Frederick and Darcy came bursting out of the secret tunnel into the cave. They both looked exhausted. Their clothes were streaked with dirt, Frederick’s nose was bleeding, and Darcy had a bruise around his left eye, which was already starting to swell.
“Emma,” he panted, “I was worried.”
Frederick, meanwhile, was turning slowly on the spot as he gazed around the cave. “Wow! What is this place?”
I decided to ignore them for the moment, and turned back to Miss Whitfield. “What is that thing you’re holding?” I pointed to her cupped hands, and she opened them slowly to reveal an object made of folded paper. A piece of origami.
A dragonfly.
The Forgotten Book Page 23