She sighed. “But it went terribly wrong. I worked on the fairy tale for several days, but as I was writing it … events overtook me. The story ran its course before I had finished telling it. And so it ended in a way I had never meant it to.” Miss Whitfield was still standing by the fire with her back to us. “The fairy queen from the old legend was a bad fairy. She gave the faun a test—and when he failed it, she took his life in return,” she said flatly.
“B-but…,” I stammered. The very idea of “bad fairies” made my head spin. Did they exist, too? Because they’d been written about in the chronicle, just like the faun? But according to the old legend it was a fairy who had first cursed the books.… Did fairies exist because the book did, or did the book exist because fairies did? My mind was racing. And I felt so sad for the faun.
“But … couldn’t you have written a different ending, and changed how things turned out?” I asked. “Couldn’t you have saved the faun?”
When Miss Whitfield turned back to face us, her eyes were shining with tears. “I tried,” she said. “I tried, but it was too late.”
“Oh,” I said.
Miss Whitfield nodded. “When the faun died—that was when I finally realized how dangerous the book was. That was when I decided never to write in it again. I hid it in the secret tunnels, at the foot of the copper basin, and covered it with the little silvery leaves that were all that was left of my friend. And I returned to England, where I started writing books—but never fairy tales. My novels were always set in the real world. I had vowed never to write another word about fairies, fauns, or magic of any kind, and I kept that vow.
“The faun had suffered a terrible fate, of course, but after his death I thought it was all over—that the chronicle couldn’t affect me anymore. It wasn’t until years later that I realized I wasn’t aging in the same way as other people. At some point in my forties I simply stopped getting any older. It was quite some time before I remembered my last entry in the chronicle, and realized what I’d done to myself.” Miss Whitfield rubbed her eyes with her thumb and index finger. “But there was nothing I could do about it, and in the end I was forced to fake my own death and leave home so as not to attract attention. Over the past two hundred years I have traveled the world, making my home in South American rain forests and Siberian villages, on a Chinese tea plantation and in various European cities, mainly in France, Germany, and England. I turned up at Stolzenburg from time to time to visit the de Winters, claiming to be the distant cousin of a great aunt, so that I could keep an eye on what was happening at the castle. For many years life here went on as normal, although after a while I discovered that the chronicle was no longer in the hiding place where I’d left it, and I thought it must have ended up in one of the libraries.
“But then, four years ago, I heard a rumor that made me think the chronicle must have resurfaced. I was on an expedition in the Arctic when I heard about Gina de Winter’s disappearance, and I immediately returned to Stolzenburg. I was afraid the chronicle must have had something to do with Gina going missing—that someone had not only found it, but realized how it worked—so I took a job as a teacher at the school and resolved to stay here until I had found the chronicle and destroyed it once and for all. But Gina must have created a new hiding place for it, because for four years my search remained fruitless. I’d started to think the book must have vanished into thin air along with Gina, but then there was another spate of mysterious incidents: first Dr. Meier’s strange behavior in the dining hall, and then the lion.… So once again I started to search the castle—more thoroughly this time. And to cover my tracks, I left little piles of the faun’s silver leaves around the castle and the grounds. I wanted to make it look as though there was some sort of ghost haunting Stolzenburg, so that whoever had the chronicle would be put off the scent.”
“I see.” I remembered Miss Whitfield picking up one of the little silver leaves at the ball, and realized that it must have fallen out of her pocket. “But you had no idea it was me writing in the chronicle.”
“No; I thought it was Frederick. And later, when your father won that award, I did briefly wonder whether it might have been him. I invited him to dinner and slipped a mild sedative into his food, hoping to loosen his tongue. But then you and Darcy told me about the book yourselves, and—”
“So that’s why my dad passed out? Because you drugged him?”
Miss Whitfield lowered her gaze. “I am truly, truly sorry about that, too. But you must believe me, Emma—your father was never in any real danger.”
I sniffed.
Darcy had stood up, too, now, and was pacing up and down the room. “So you think Gina used the book to write herself into oblivion? You think something went wrong?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Miss Whitfield. “That’s exactly what I think.”
“So how do we find her?”
Miss Whitfield opened her mouth to reply, but before she could say a word Darcy had spun around and was staring at the secret door. “What’s that noise?” he said in alarm.
And it was true—over the crackling of the fire I could hear a strange noise that hadn’t been there a moment ago. It was coming from the other side of the secret door. Muffled, yet somehow ominous. Was it footsteps? Or the rustling of paper? Was it the sound of hundreds of dragonfly wings whirring through the air?
Miss Whitfield snatched up the book and held it close. “P-perhaps Frederick has woken up?” she said falteringly.
Darcy and I exchanged a glance. It didn’t sound like Frederick, at least not Frederick alone … and it was getting louder.
The best thing to do would have been to take the chronicle and run. But Darcy seemed to have lost control of his limbs (and possibly his mind, too). He walked toward the secret door as if on autopilot, reached out a hand toward the imitation book that acted as a lever, and watched as the bookcase swung open before him. All at once the rustling swelled into a deafening roar, rushing out of the darkness toward us.
Darcy moved forward like a robot programmed to keep putting one foot in front of the other.
“NO!” I shouted. “Stop it! What are you doing? Get away from there!”
But Darcy had already taken another step forward, and he was standing right in the middle of the doorway when suddenly the frame started to creak and splinter. The heavy bookcase that formed the secret door began to tremble. With a sudden jolt (it was impossible to say what had caused it), the bookcase swung backward toward Darcy. I saw him spin around, his eyes wide. But it was too late.
The bookcase slammed into his chest, trapping him in the doorway.
I screamed.
I lurched toward him. He was gasping for breath, and all the color had gone out of his face. “Darcy!” I cried, tugging at the edge of the bookcase. “Are you hurt?”
“Don’t know,” he said. His breath rattled. His upper body was crushed between the bookcase and the door frame. “I can’t … I can’t … breathe.”
Shit!
My blood ran cold. This was the book’s curse. This was the moment I’d been dreading, the moment my first ever entry in the chronicle would come back to haunt me. I’d written that Darcy de Winter should choke on the books he’d stolen from us … I gritted my teeth as I tugged at the heavy wooden bookcase.
I wasn’t going to let a few stupid words on a bit of paper take away someone I cared about. I wasn’t going to lose Darcy the way Miss Whitfield had lost the faun!
“Help me, quick!” I shouted, but then I saw that Miss Whitfield was already beside me, clinging to the bookcase and leaning her entire body weight backward to try to shift it. Together we heaved and strained. But the mechanism that opened the door seemed to be jammed. The bookcase wouldn’t budge. It was hopeless.
Darcy stared at me, his eyelids fluttering.
I let go of the bookcase. “Okay, okay,” I muttered, turning to Miss Whitfield. “Give me the book. It’s our only hope. Quick!”
I held one hand out toward Miss Whitfield and
with the other I rummaged in my trouser pocket for a pen—I knew I had one somewhere. But Miss Whitfield didn’t move. What was wrong with her? Hadn’t she heard me?
“GIVE ME THE BOOK!” I repeated, my voice cracking.
Miss Whitfield took a step backward. “Emma,” she said quietly. “You can’t write anything else in the book. It’s too dangerous.”
I could hardly believe my ears. Didn’t she get it? “This is Darcy’s life we’re talking about. He’s CHOKING! We can’t just let him die!” I yelled, wondering whether I should make a lunge for her and take the book by force. But suddenly she held it out to me of her own accord.
“I know what it’s like to live with a terrible burden of guilt,” she said, “so I’m going to leave it up to you to decide. But I’m begging you not to do it, Emma.”
I snatched the chronicle out of her hands and opened it. I lowered my pen to the paper and … hesitated.
Darcy’s skin had taken on a bluish tinge. He must have been on the verge of losing consciousness. Miss Whitfield was tugging at the heavy oak bookcase again. Was it my imagination or had the roaring sound gotten louder? Was there something drumming against the door from the other side?
I didn’t care. If I wanted to save Darcy I had to be quick.
I’d already composed the sentence in my head. September 2017: Today the hinges of the bookcase-door in the west wing library were so rusty that they completely gave way. All I had to do was write it down.
But what if something went wrong again?
What if the hinges didn’t break until tomorrow? What if half the castle came tumbling down along with the door?
I weighed the book in my hands. My eyes darted from Darcy’s bluish-gray face to the flames in the fireplace. “And … what if we threw it in the fire?”
Miss Whitfield was panting with the effort of tugging at the door. “Yes … that might be the best thing to do. If you destroy it we’ll be rid of it once and for all, and its magic will be undone. I just don’t know what will happen to Gina, if we destroy it before we find her.”
I bit my lip, tasted blood again. Miss Whitfield was right. I probably should destroy the chronicle. If I threw it on the fire and the words inside it ceased to exist, then they would no longer have the power to suffocate Darcy, would they? But what would he say if he survived this ordeal only to find his sister gone for good? What if, when the flames obliterated the book’s magic, they also obliterated the only thing that was keeping Gina de Winter alive? Was that how it worked?
I didn’t know. To be honest, I didn’t have the faintest idea what would happen if I threw the book on the fire, whether it would save Darcy and kill Gina or the other way round or neither. Everything about the chronicle was unpredictable. Everything.
I couldn’t do it.
I couldn’t do anything.
Could I?
Later on, I sometimes managed to persuade myself that I’d dropped the book because my fingers were so sweaty. Or because I’d somehow sensed we’d be able to free Darcy without using magic.
But in reality, it was the sheer terror of having to make a decision I might regret forever that paralyzed me in those horrible, endless seconds as I watched Darcy choking to death before my eyes.
It was that terror that left me frozen, helpless, unable to think straight. And it was that terror that eventually made me drop the book to the floor and grab hold of the bookcase again in the hope of busting the hinges with plain old muscle power. Darcy was unconscious now; there was no time to try anything else.
But the bookcase still wouldn’t budge. Darcy was deathly pale. And the noises on the other side of the door were so loud by now that whatever was making them must have been right behind the wooden paneling. I could still hear the swishing and rustling of paper, but now there were footsteps, too. Something was hammering on the other side of the wood, making it shudder—something that sounded like a pair of fists. And then a hand appeared in the gap above Darcy’s head, and a flurry of little whitish scraps of paper came spilling out from behind it. The owner of the hand shouted for help. It was Frederick.
“The door’s stuck!” I called to him above the noise. “Something must have gotten jammed!”
The hand was withdrawn and the hammering grew louder, more desperate. Then it stopped abruptly, for a second or maybe two. And then the bookcase was rocked by a powerful blow, and then another. Frederick must have been hurling himself against the other side of the door.
I looked at Miss Whitfield, and she nodded at me. The next time Frederick buffeted the door with his shoulder we were ready, and we pulled with all our strength. I dug my fingernails into the wood and heaved.
Then there was a loud crack and, at last, the heavy oak bookcase began to move. The hidden mechanism creaked and grated. As the bookcase swung toward us, Miss Whitfield and I both lost our balance and fell over backward onto the rug.
At the same moment, something shot past above our heads: a silvery white cloud of rustling paper. The fluttering of countless wings filled the air. I couldn’t be certain, but I thought I could make out a few shimmering dragonfly bodies in amongst the cloud, which now darted toward the fireplace and hung in the air for a moment, dangerously close to the flames, before whisking up the chimney and out into the night. In the blink of an eye the cloud was gone, vanishing as swiftly as it had appeared. I found myself wondering whether it had really been there at all, or whether I’d just imagined it.
I sat up.
Darcy had fallen to the floor, too. Was he still breathing?
Miss Whitfield was crawling over to where the chronicle lay. Frederick was staggering around the room, disoriented. His cheeks were covered in red scratches that looked like paper cuts. And he was rubbing the back of his head.
“I … think … I just had a really weird dream,” he stammered, lurching toward Darcy’s bathroom. I didn’t see whether he went in or not, and I didn’t care. All I could see was Darcy, lying pale and still at the foot of the bookcase. Was he…?
As I got closer I could see his chest rising and falling. He was breathing. He was alive! For the first time ever, I was glad the chronicle was so unpredictable—this time, instead of following my instructions to the letter, it had spared us the worst. Tears of relief welled up in my eyes.
“Darcy!” I whispered. “Darcy!” I bent over him, studying his dark eyebrows; his long, straight nose; his chiseled cheekbones; the little veins on his eyelids; and the bruise where Frederick’s fist had caught him. This face had become so familiar to me over the past few days and weeks. It was angular and serious, sometimes proud, sometimes arrogant. But I didn’t care, because it was Darcy’s face, and now I knew the real Darcy.
Gently, very gently, I placed my lips on his blue lips. They felt completely different from how I’d imagined they’d be. Softer and firmer at the same time, cool and warm. And at my touch they gradually came back to life.
September 2017
At last, the mortal remains of G
18
The dark green Mini was parked in the courtyard again, in front of the steps leading up to the main door. The trunk was open and Darcy was lifting his wheeled suitcase into it. This was proving a greater challenge than you might have thought. Firstly, Darcy still had pain in his chest where the bookcase had pressed into it over a week ago. (He had some impressive bruises on his ribs, and it was a miracle none of them were broken.) And secondly, there was hardly any room left in the trunk because my backpack and Miss Whitfield’s luggage (three suitcases and a hatbox) were taking up almost all the available space.
But Toby, as always, was there to assist his friend in his hour of need. He helped Darcy reorganize the bags, cases, and backpacks so that everything just about fit into the trunk. My dad, meanwhile, discreetly tucked a packet of chewing gum into my pocket to guard against travel sickness, and Charlotte and Hannah danced about excitedly on the bottom step.
“You have to let us know as soon as you’ve found her,” said Hannah for wha
t must have been the hundredth time that afternoon.
“And please be careful with the … you know what,” added Charlotte, with a sideways glance at my dad. We’d decided not to inflict the knowledge of a magic book and a dead faun on him just yet.
“We will,” I assured her, patting the handbag in which I was carrying the chronicle. There’d been no doubt in my mind that it would have to go in my hand luggage—partly to make sure I didn’t lose it if our suitcases went missing, and partly because I’d started feeling slightly paranoid about the book in general. Whenever it wasn’t right next to me, I found it almost impossible to concentrate. And even when I carried it around with me like I was doing now, I felt anxious. It was as if I was holding a ticking time bomb that could go off at any moment.
Now that we were setting off, I felt even more apprehensive. Not for the first time, I wondered whether the long journey Darcy, Miss Whitfield, and I were about to undertake was really justified. How could we be sure we weren’t chasing a red herring?
It was now three days since I’d found the article, on the website of a local newspaper: It was a couple years old, a few lines long, and had probably been read by only a handful of local residents. It talked about a girl who, in December 2013, had suddenly turned up in the middle of nowhere suffering from memory loss. She was now said to be working in a local gas station. The description of the girl closely matched that of Gina de Winter, and the location sounded promising, too: The amnesiac girl had been found one morning by a group of hikers near the entrance to a big national park, close to a gas station that went by the distinctive name of the World’s End. It was located on an island called Newfoundland, off the east coast of Canada.
The Forgotten Book Page 25