My dad was less than enthusiastic about our trip. We hadn’t even left the castle courtyard yet, and already he was sick with worry. He looked on warily as the boys loaded up the car, his right hand resting on my shoulder as if to hold me back, to stop me from getting into that car and driving off to the airport and flying away.
“Has that thing even passed its inspection?” he whispered.
“Of course,” I said. I didn’t actually know whether it had or not—I had no idea what a British inspection sticker looked like—but it didn’t really matter. “I’m going to be fine. Darcy and Miss Whitfield will be with me,” I reassured him, hugging him close.
My dad had had quite a lot to cope with over the past few days. First I’d told him I had a new boyfriend, and that the new boyfriend was Darcy de Winter; then I’d told him that this new boyfriend and I were proposing to travel to the other side of the world, for three whole weeks, in the middle of term. Even a more laid-back father than mine might have had a little trouble getting his head around all this. Which made it all the more remarkable that my dad had finally agreed to let me go. The fact that Miss Whitfield was coming with us had helped, of course. As had my fully up-to-date vaccination card—and the fact that we had information that might just lead us to Gina de Winter.
But he still found it difficult to let go of me when, at last, all the luggage was safely stowed in the car, and Darcy came over and took my hand. As I walked toward the Mini, I saw a telltale glitter in my dad’s eyes. “Make sure you always fasten your seat belt. And only drink boiled water. And stay on the marked paths. And watch out for wild animals,” he said hoarsely, as I settled myself on the back seat beside Miss Whitfield’s hatbox and Darcy slid in behind the steering wheel.
Miss Whitfield lowered herself onto the passenger seat and was about to close the car door when somebody came hurtling down the steps and pushed past Toby, Charlotte, Hannah, and my dad, all of whom had just been getting ready to start waving or crying or a mixture of the two.
For a fraction of a second I was afraid it was Frederick, making a last-ditch attempt to get the book back, and instinctively I clutched my handbag to my chest. But then I realized it couldn’t possibly be Frederick; after that surreal night in the tunnels he’d gone tearing back to Cologne like a bat out of hell. And now I recognized the slender figure of Miss Berkenbeck, holding an enormous picnic basket out in front of her.
“For the journey,” she said, depositing the basket on Miss Whitfield’s lap. “It’s just a few sandwiches. And a cake. Some pickles. A bit of fruit. Some hard-boiled eggs. A bowl of chocolate pudding. Lemonade. Potato salad. A few pints of milk. And a meatloaf—I found the recipe in OK! magazine the other week, and…”
“Thank you,” said Miss Whitfield, visibly taken aback by the volume of unexpected provisions that had just landed in her lap. “This ought to keep us going all the way to Canada. Perhaps we’ll even be able to offer some to Gina, if we find her.”
“What do you mean, if?” exclaimed Miss Berkenbeck. “Of course you’ll find her. We made that chocolate pudding especially for her, you know.”
Darcy and I exchanged glances in the rearview mirror. I saw a flicker of amusement in his eyes. Like me, he’d been feeling increasingly nervous over the past few days—but hopeful, too, that we might find his sister. And what could make for a more perfect reunion than being able to present Gina with a bowl of three-day-old chocolate pudding that had traveled halfway around the world? I grinned to myself, while Miss Berkenbeck produced a flowery handkerchief and waved it vigorously in farewell as Darcy started up the car. Soon we were pulling out of the castle gates, away from Stolzenburg and all its legends.
* * *
Two days later—after more than twenty hours in the air, and layovers in Brussels and Toronto—we landed at the airport in Saint John, the oldest city in North America. The air was crisp and clean, and the moment we stepped off the plane we were greeted by adverts for whale-watching trips, drifting icebergs, vast forests, rocky plateaus, and prehistoric ravines. But we hardly noticed them: We weren’t here for the breathtaking scenery or the geological marvels. The only things we were interested in were a shabby old gas station called the World’s End and the young woman who worked there (or who had worked there a few years ago, at least, if the article in the local paper was to be believed).
Darcy was all for driving our rented car inland straightaway, but after the long plane journey all three of us were exhausted; I was longing for a hot shower, and neither Darcy nor Miss Whitfield was really in a fit state to drive. So we bought ourselves some sandwiches (the picnic basket, unfortunately, hadn’t made it past Belgian Customs) and checked into a motel. In the morning we would set off for Gros Morne National Park and the log cabin we’d booked before leaving Germany.
The World’s End gas station was aptly named, as we realized the next day, after driving for several hours through ravines, forests, and swamps to get to it. By the time we arrived we hadn’t seen another car on the road for at least two hours. The gas pumps were so rusty you could hardly tell what color they must once have been, and the panes of glass in the windows of the little kiosk looked dull and grimy, as did the windows of the houses in the tiny hamlet behind it. Beyond the village, the road turned into a dirt track that disappeared into the foothills of a mountain range.
This was it, then.
The world’s end.
We didn’t know what Gina was calling herself now, but we had several photos of her: The most recent one had been taken at the Autumn Ball four years ago. If we went from house to house showing the photos to the villagers, then sooner or later one of them was bound to recognize her. Assuming our theory was correct. Assuming Gina de Winter had ever been here at all.
We left the car by one of the gas pumps and walked slowly toward the kiosk, clutching the photographs. A movement behind the grubby glass showed that there was somebody there, and as we got closer we could see that it was a young woman with dark hair. All of a sudden, it was as if the mountains around us were holding their breath.
Then everything seemed to happen in slow motion. I watched as Darcy dropped the photos—we had no need of them now—and ran inside the kiosk. I was about to follow him, but Miss Whitfield held me back.
“Let them have this moment,” she murmured, and I nodded. She was right, of course.
We stood there watching through the dusty window as Darcy entered the kiosk and barged past the shelves of sweets and magazines, oblivious to everything but the woman behind the counter. She stared at him, wide-eyed with terror, probably thinking this was a robbery. He was standing in front of her now, his shoulders trembling. I couldn’t see his face, because he had his back to us. But I saw the dark-haired young woman give a start, and then I saw the fear vanish from her face to be replaced by a look of confusion. A moment later, I saw recognition course through her like a lightning bolt. Tears ran down her face as Darcy put his arms around her.
“Shall we take a little stroll?” asked Miss Whitfield, and we linked arms and walked away.
* * *
Gina de Winter was twenty years old, and for the past four years she had been going by the name of Lindsay. She was as tall as her brother, with the same proud arch to her eyebrows, the same straight nose and fierce look in her eyes. But she seemed less arrogant. Less lonely. And that evening, as we sat around the fire outside our log cabin wrapped in blankets, she told us her story.
She told us about her time at Stolzenburg and how homesick she’d been. About the ill-fated trick Frederick had played on her, about the chronicle and her search for the faun and how she’d been so brokenhearted that she’d grown reckless. Those poems she’d written in the book had set off a chain of events she couldn’t control, and that was why she’d climbed out of her bedroom window one December night four years ago and gone down to the river. She’d known it was wrong, but the magic of her own words had been too powerful. She hadn’t been able to resist it—and neither had Frederick, who’d rowed her out onto t
he river against his will. The boat had gotten caught in a strong current and capsized.
At this point Gina’s memories became hazy. She couldn’t remember how she’d managed to get out of the river and climb into a freight container. And she had no idea how she’d ended up on the back of a lorry, parked at a gas station in the middle of nowhere. All she knew was that she’d crept out of the container into the wilderness where, a few hours later, she’d run into a group of hikers—and hadn’t even been able to tell them her name.
People had assumed she’d run away from home, and she’d been grateful when Meg, the elderly lady who owned the gas station, had taken her in and given her a job. She’d sensed that she was missing somebody but it wasn’t until today, when she’d seen her twin brother standing there in front of her, that everything had come flooding back and she’d remembered who she was, where she came from, and what had happened to her.
Now, as I showed Gina the chronicle in the flickering firelight, she let out a sharp cry and recoiled from it as if from a poisonous snake.
“Well then,” said Miss Whitfield. “I think it’s time.” Very gently, she lifted the book out of my hands and stroked the worn cloth binding. “We should do it now.”
“Do what?” I asked, but in the same moment I realized what she meant. I leaped to my feet and stepped in between her and the fire. “No. Wait. It’s too dangerous. We don’t know what’ll happen if we destroy the book. We might break its curse. But what about all the magic it’s already done? What if all of that was lost?”
Miss Whitfield shook her head. “Do you really want to go on living in fear, Emma? You’ve seen what happened to Gina. What if the book falls into the wrong hands? And are you sure you want to spend the rest of your life wondering whether Darcy is about to be crushed by a bookcase?”
I thought about how panicky I’d felt, the past few days, whenever I’d been more than a few feet away from the chronicle—during my swimming lesson, for example, when I’d had to leave it in my locker. Miss Whitfield was right: I couldn’t spend the rest of my life carrying the book around with me, worrying about its curse. “Th-then we’ll hide it in a safe place. In a Swiss bank vault. Or somewhere out here in the wilderness, in a hollow tree or something,” I stammered.
“No.” Miss Whitfield pushed me aside. “That’s what I did two hundred years ago and, as you can see, it didn’t work. Let’s put an end to this once and for all.”
“But—” I began. But Gina and Darcy had both stood up now, too.
“I want to do it,” said Gina firmly, and Darcy put his arm around me.
“It’s for the best, Emma,” he said quietly. “We’ve found Gina. We don’t need magic anymore now.”
I let out a deep breath, looking from Darcy to the book to Miss Whitfield and Gina, and finally the flaming logs.
At last, I nodded.
Gina took hold of the chronicle and traced the embossed outline of the faun with her finger. Then she turned, quickly, and threw the book onto the fire. The red and orange flames licked at the paper and the cloth, turning it black, eating away at all the words, all the thoughts, all the events that had been preserved in those pages for centuries.
Gina, meanwhile, had dropped to her knees and was bending dangerously low over the fire, as if she wanted to be sure that every last scrap of paper was destroyed. That there really was nothing left of the book that had done her and Darcy and the faun and everyone else so much harm.
Yes, it had been the right thing to do. It was the only way to break the curse. But it still hurt to see all those centuries’ worth of words going up in smoke. In spite of everything that had happened, it felt like I’d just lost a dear old friend.
“Don’t cry,” Darcy whispered, brushing a tear out of the corner of my eye with his thumb. I hadn’t realized I was crying. Darcy pulled me toward him and I hid my face for a moment in the warmth of his shoulder.
“We’re free now,” he whispered into my hair, and then he kissed the skin beside my ear, then my cheek, the side of my nose, and finally my mouth. We’d been together for over a week now, but this kiss was different from all the others. It was soft and passionate and it tasted of the wood smoke from the fire and of the forest all around us. And there was a promise in it: a promise that now, at last, everything was okay. Everything was going to be okay.
As we moved apart, we saw Gina standing a few yards away from us. She, too, was crying—crying and laughing at the same time. “Let’s go home!” she cried. “Let’s go now! I have to call Mom and Dad! Come on, let’s go!”
“Our flight back isn’t for another three weeks, though. I wonder if we can change our tickets?” I asked, turning to where Miss Whitfield had been standing. But there was no reply.
Miss Whitfield was no longer standing by the fire. I spun around. Even the tree stump she’d been sitting on was gone. And something told me she hadn’t just gone inside the cabin.
“She…,” I whispered.
Gina shrugged. Darcy was silent. I felt a lump in my throat.
Miss Whitfield was gone. Of course she was. I should have seen it coming. She’d vanished along with the book, whose magic had kept her alive for over two hundred years.
“She knew,” I said. “She must have known, mustn’t she?”
“Yes,” said Darcy. “I think this was what she wanted.”
I reached for Darcy’s and Gina’s hands and squeezed them. “Good-bye, Eleanor Morland Whitfield,” I whispered, and suddenly I knew that when we got back to Stolzenburg there would be no more sheep and no more secret tunnels, no more paper dragonflies and no more faun bones. Stolzenburg would be a perfectly ordinary, wonderful school with perfectly ordinary, wonderful people in it. Now and then they would tell old legends and fairy tales about the castle, the way people always do about old castles. But they would be just that: fairy tales.
Nothing more, and nothing less.
The Faun’s Song
And I wait between the lines,
In the darkness of the night,
I hear wings, gossamer-fine,
Approaching with the thunder’s might,
The strangest sound I ever heard,
I almost dare not look,
Oh, how I long for different words,
New paper, a new book!
Seek me in between the lines,
Where once my father sought,
For I no longer wish to be
This creature that he wrought.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mechthild Gläser is an award-winning author in her native Germany. Her first book to be translated into English was The Book Jumper. You can sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Epigraph
One night
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
About the Author
Copyright
Text copyright © 2017 by Mechthild Gläser.
Translation copyright © 2018 by Romy Fursland. All rights reserved.
A Feiwel and Friends Book
&n
bsp; An imprint of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010
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All rights reserved.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017944811
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First hardcover edition 2018
eBook edition 2018
Originally published in 2017 in German by Loerve Verlag GMbH under the title Emma, der Faun und das vergessene Buch.
eISBN 9781250146786
The Forgotten Book Page 26