Troubletwisters

by Garth Nix

  There was no light at the end of this tunnel. Just more water as far as his eyes could see.

  For a moment, Jack seriously considered swimming as far as he could, and he would either get lucky . . . or drown. But the moment passed.

  ‘Where there’s life, there’s hope,’ muttered Jack after he broke the surface and took a deep breath. It was one of the sayings his father used, and it made him feel both slightly better and intensely alone. If only his father was with him now!

  A tiny wave slopped across his ankles as Jack retreated out of the water. He looked behind him and saw another slowly rolling in, and noticed that the water level was rising. The pipe did lead to the sea, and the tide was coming in. Soon the whole maze of pipes would be full of sea water.

  ‘I really have to get out,’ Jack muttered.

  He didn’t expect an answer, but he got one.

  The voice, the dark, insidious voice, was back inside his head.

  ++Jaaackaaaraaannn.++

  ‘Leave me alone!’ Jack shouted. He clenched his fist and, unable to hit anything else, punched the palm of his other hand.

  ++Come back, troubletwister,++ said the voice. ++We don’t want you to drown.++

  ‘So show me the way out!’

  ++Join us, and we will show you everything.++

  ‘I already told you, I’m never joining you!’

  ++Never say never, troubletwister,++ whispered the voice in his head. ++Sometimes you need to change your mind. Remember, we will tell you everything you need to know. All knowledge will be yours.++

  ‘Yeah, right,’ Jack said. ‘What do you really want?’

  ++Only to protect you, Jackaran. Only to make you safe.++

  ‘From who?’

  ++From the witch. From the Wardens. They are tricking you. Turn your back on them and join us instead. We will tell you nothing but the truth.++

  Jack stood shivering at the edge of the water in wet, heavy clothes. If the mental voice had found him, he was sure the worm-creature wouldn’t be far away. A second later, he saw the first white-eyed rat, sneaking along, leading a line of others, all marching in step.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Jack shouted. ‘I don’t know who the Wardens are or who you are. I just want to find my sister and go home!’

  ++Your sister is with us. Come, join her. We do not mean you harm. We will be home to both of you.++

  The chill Jack felt came from more than just the cold. The darkness pressed into him again, and he ground his fists into his eyes to keep it out.

  ‘I don’t believe you! Go away! I . . . I refuse to listen to you! I’m not . . . I’m not here!’

  Bright lights flashed behind Jack’s eyelids. His voice echoed wildly in the tunnel. The invasion of his mind reached a peak, and then suddenly it fell away. When the last impressions of his cries faded, the tunnel was silent. The rats were still there, but they were no longer marching in step. They were scrambling about in confusion, turning their heads from side to side, staring blindly in the gloom.

  ++Ah, you see, your powers grow,++ said the voice. ++But we can teach you more than simple tricks with darkness. Far more! She will never tell you who you really are. But we will.++

  Jack almost answered, but just in time shut his mouth very slowly and quietly as the rats continued to look around, staring in all directions, sometimes even straight at him, but without any sign of recognition.

  They can’t see me, Jack realised. They can’t see me!

  He remembered the way Jaide had looked right through him on the stairs the previous night, and how he had seemed to disappear from the drawing room mirror while playing with the pogo stick. He thought of how well he could see in the dark, when there was no light at all, and how he had escaped the creatures before, when the light had cast such dark shadows across the tunnel. And there was the whole talking-cat thing.

  Powers, thought Jack. It says I have powers . . . so maybe I do!

  It wasn’t such a weird thought. Since coming to Portland, he had seen far weirder things. And if it meant that the voice couldn’t get inside his head, and the rats could no longer see him, he was more than happy to accept it without explanation.

  Jack slipped off his sneakers so they wouldn’t squelch, and tiptoed up the pipe. The rats grew excited as he came nearer and they raced about sniffing – but he edged past without alerting any of them. Further along, there were great mounds of ants and cockroaches, the building blocks of the worm-creature. But he got past them, too, holding his breath and creeping as silently as he could manage.

  Now I’ve got to find a better tunnel, he thought. One that goes uphill.

  He chose one and started along it, pausing to stifle a yawn. It was only then, the energy lent by fear fading from him, that he realised he was very, very tired. Whatever he was doing to keep himself hidden was also wearing him out.

  At the back of his mind whispered a very small voice, his own, warning him that he was running out of the frying pan and into the fire. If the voice was right, and Grandma X was evil, escaping from the tunnels might be the very worst thing he could do . . .

  Once at home, Grandma X appeared older and more exhausted than ever, but Jaide, still feeling hot blood burning in her face, felt the need to defend herself.

  ‘Look at it from our side,’ she said. ‘The bugs – the hot chocolate – the cards —’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Grandma X. ‘I understand. I would have told you everything earlier, but too much foreknowledge can send a troubletwister’s Gifts astray. Even more astray than normal. Obviously, I misjudged that. When this is all behind us, I hope you’ll give me the opportunity to make it up to both of you.’

  ‘Okay . . .’ said Jaide reluctantly. She wanted an apology less than she wanted answers. ‘But what about —’

  ‘No time for that this second. Come on. We have work to do! I’ll explain what I can as we go.’

  With renewed energy, Grandma X hurried her out to the car, which had somehow started while they were in the house and was waiting with its front doors open.

  ‘It can’t drive itself,’ Grandma X said. ‘But sometimes inanimate objects gain a certain liveliness when they are long associated with one of us.’

  ‘One of what?’ asked Jaide. ‘A witch?’

  ‘I am not a witch!’ exclaimed Grandma X. The car’s wheels spun as they exited the gravel drive and shot out into the lane. ‘The proper name for what I am is a Warden. I was born with a Gift that I have spent my entire life trying to control. You’ll be a Warden, too, one day, if you can get your Gift properly under your command.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘Because it’s hereditary, Jaidith dear. Your father is a Warden, I’m a Warden, my mother was a Warden, her father was a Warden . . . and so on unto antiquity.’

  ‘But Mum’s not one, is she?’

  Grandma X’s foot went down on the accelerator and the car rocked as they hurtled around the corner of Watchward Lane and Parkhill Street.

  ‘No, she is not. It is one of the trag — difficulties of a Warden’s life that we must marry non-Wardens in order to have the chance of Gifted children. It can make life very . . . tricky.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Jaide thoughtfully. That explained a lot about her father. Knowing Jack would be really interested to hear this, she felt yet another pang of fear for her brother.

  ‘Where are we going, Grandma?’ she asked, realising they were heading away from the place Jack had been captured, not toward it.

  ‘To the lighthouse.’

  ‘What are we going to do there?’

  ‘We’re going to raise the tide rather more than usual and flush The Evil out of the old tunnels, into the open, and Jackaran with it.’

  ‘But what if Jack is trapped? He’ll drown!’

  Grandma X glanced at her as the Hillman shrieked past the cemetery. ‘Don’t worry. The Evil won’t let your brother drown. It needs him alive to get at us.’

  ‘Why?’

&nbs
p; ‘If The Evil takes over Jackaran, it will use him to attack us. Troubletwisters are particularly vulnerable to The Evil, and particularly prized by it, because if it succeeds in taking one over, then it can take over his or her Gift as well.’

  ‘Why do you call us troubletwisters?’ asked Jaide. ‘Mum thinks it’s just an old word.’

  ‘It is a very old word, Jaidith, and a meaningful one. Young Wardens just coming into their Gifts are often unconscious causes of magical trouble, and they twist and complicate any existing trouble as well. And believe me, there’s always trouble somewhere.’

  ‘You’ve been fighting The Evil a long time, haven’t you?’ said Jaide with sudden insight.

  ‘All my life,’ said Grandma X. ‘Ever since I was a troubletwister like you. The Wardens are the enemy of The Evil. We stop it from getting into this world, and we have done so for centuries. If we ever weaken, all that we hold dear will be destroyed. We cannot let The Evil win, no matter what the cost. Do you understand?’

  Jaide sat up straighter.

  ‘Yes,’ she said in a small voice. She knew very well what Grandma X was saying. They were going to try to save Jack, but his life was less important than stopping The Evil in its tracks. If Grandma X had to choose between them, Jack would lose.

  THE CAR SKIDDED TO A halt in the lighthouse car park. Grandma X turned off the engine and pulled on the handbrake before leaning over to cup Jaide’s chin in one old hand, just for a second.

  ‘You’re a brave girl, Jaidith, and one day you’ll make a good Warden. Remember that, no matter what happens here.’

  Then she was sliding out through the car and waving for Jaide to follow. Long brass rods had been rattling around inside the trunk like giant toothpicks, and it took a moment to gather them.

  A restless wind sent Jaide’s hair dancing, and she felt the urge to jump up into it, up into the sky with its scudding clouds, to join a solitary seagull that was struggling to maintain a stationary position as it looked for food among the jagged rocks of the reef.

  But the moment passed, and the seagull dropped down on a fish or crab with a predatory keee!

  ‘Bring as many rods as you can carry,’ Grandma X told Jaide, who briefly wondered if they had also come there to fish. ‘We have to stick them in the ground between the lighthouse and Dagger Reef in this shape.’

  Using the tip of one of the rods, she drew a U in the ground with a vertical line down the middle:

  ‘This side,’ she said, tapping the open end of the U, ‘points out to sea.’

  ‘What’s it for?’ asked Jaide.

  ‘A spell, I suppose you could call it, that speaks to the ocean, asking it to bring in a storm surge of wind, wave and tide.’

  ‘Isn’t this going to look weird to normal people?’ asked Jaide as she hurried around the base of the lighthouse, loaded with rods.

  ‘There will be no “normal” people about,’ said Grandma X with great certainty.

  ‘Okay.’ Jaide still felt like someone was watching her, even though she couldn’t see anyone, not even when she looked up to the top of the lighthouse and the observation rail around the light at the top.

  The door at the bottom of the lighthouse was padlocked three times on the outside, so no one could be inside. Jaide wondered if anyone ever did go in, except for the workers who looked after the automatic light. It wasn’t open to the public, like some other lighthouses she’d visited.

  The ground was soft after the rain of the weekend, so sticking in the rods wasn’t difficult. Jaide and Grandma X put in nine, then ran back to the car to get more. Even with only half of the trident shape completed, Jaide could see it starting to have an effect. Out to sea, the water was growing dark as the wind came, and a line of black clouds was rolling in from the horizon.

  By the time the next lot of nine rods was in place, great booming green waves were smashing into the reef below, sending plumes of spray high enough for the rising wind to blow them across the lighthouse, thoroughly saturating Jaide.

  ‘Go and wait by the car,’ shouted Grandma X, even her powerful voice barely audible over the wind and crashing surf. ‘I have to go do something. Think heavy thoughts!’

  Jaide went back to the car, fighting with every step to stay on course, not to be picked up by the wind despite her thinking extremely heavy thoughts. She was shivering and wished she’d brought her coat. But it was undoubtedly colder where Jack was, and soon would become a whole lot wetter, so she told herself not to complain.

  The seagull that had been fishing at the reef was sheltering in the lee of the car. She didn’t blame it. Inside the car, Jaide wiped the condensation off the window so she could see what Grandma X was doing. The old lady was standing at the closed end of the trident symbol they had made out of the rods, one hand raised up to the sky and the other holding one of the rods. The spray from the waves below whipped around her, almost like a tornado, and the first, heavy drops of rain came spearing down, as if aiming right at Grandma X’s head.

  A booming roll of thunder came from the open sea. Grandma X lowered her hand and let go of the rod, then hurried to where Jaide was waiting in the car. With a rumble, the engine started of its own accord again.

  ‘I hope that works,’ said Grandma X. She slumped back in her seat and shut her eyes for a few seconds.

  ‘Are you all right?’ asked Jaide.

  Grandma X opened her eyes and gave Jaide a rather forced smile.

  ‘Yes, dear. I’m just a little tired . . . and rather perplexed. The Evil is far stronger than it should be.’

  She looked around through the windshield, each side window, and the rear window, before adding, almost under her breath, ‘Yet all four seem to be in place, so far as I can tell. . .’

  ‘All four what?’ asked Jaide. She was getting a bit concerned about Grandma X. She needed the old lady to focus on helping Jack, not sit here in the car mumbling. ‘What do we do now?’

  ‘Now we go home,’ said Grandma X, suddenly decisive again. She put the car in gear and reversed with a screech of wet tires suddenly finding their grip. ‘We watch the storm rise, and see what The Evil does in response.’

  ‘How will it know we had anything to do with this?’ Jaide said. ‘This could just be an ordinary storm.’

  ‘It would know soon enough in any case. It would feel the difference, as I would feel its interference with any natural force. But it already knows this is no normal storm. It saw us calling it.’

  ‘How?’ Jaide swivelled in her seat to look back at the receding lighthouse, remembering the feeling that she had been watched the whole time they were on the shore. ‘I didn’t see any bugs or rats or dogs.’

  ‘You saw the gull, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes, but . . .’

  ‘The Evil works by taking over small things, like midges and ants, then moving up to steadily more complex creatures, like rats, birds, dogs – and people. Then, as it draws upon the power of its collective life forces, it can do other things . . . but it isn’t always obvious and it can disguise itself and its actions. You need training to recognise its presence. That gull was an agent of The Evil, all right, and what one of its creatures sees, it sees.’

  ‘That’s how you found Jack,’ Jaide said with sudden understanding. ‘You got into the mind of that rat and followed it back to The Evil.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  A violent gust of wind shook the car as they pulled up in front of the house.

  ‘I’m hoping the storm will distract The Evil sufficiently for us to repeat the trick and find out where Jack will pop up.’

  However, the rat was dead, lying on its back in the jar with eyes normal but blank and legs curled tight. Grandma X looked accusingly at Kleo, who shook her head and trotted out the door, presumably to find another rodent hostage.

  ‘Well, that’s disappointing, but not entirely unexpected. The Evil can will its creatures to death, though it is always loath to lose even one of its conquests, no matter how small it is. Particularly whe
n the battle has barely begun.’

  Grandma X scooped up her opera glasses. ‘Let’s go up onto the roof and see what we can see. Not forgetting our coats on the way. I would suggest an umbrella, but with this wind . . .’

  They climbed the stairs to the top of the house. Opening the hatch let a great gust of cold air in to howl down the stairs. Jaide tightly gripped the edges of the door as she stepped outside, and she had to jump to the rail, where she hung on for dear life, feeling as though she might fly away at any moment. All around them, treetops swayed and groaned, and the branches of the tall fir leaned over so far, they tapped on the house’s angular eaves. The sky was as dark as dusk, and the world had been leached of colour. To the east, the horizon was ribboned with lightning.

  Grandma X swept the town with her opera glasses. Then she put them down and turned the ring on her hand around so that the stone was clearly visible to Jaide for the first time. It was a large oval moonstone.

  ‘I will be . . . absent . . . for a few minutes,’ said Grandma X.

  She closed her eyes, leaned against the rail, and became very still. Slowly, the moonstone ring began to glow with a soft internal light.

  Jaide wondered if Grandma X would teach her the trick of it when all this was over. She imagined thousands of uses for leaving her body, such as sneaking into the cinema without paying, spying on her parents, or even visiting her friends back in the city.

  A gust of wind broke into these thoughts. The house creaked, and the first heavy drops of rain struck the widow’s walk. Jaide pulled the hood of her coat up over her head and reached out to do the same for Grandma X, but just at that moment an extra-strong blast of wind blew straight in and lifted her right off the ground.

  Suddenly Jaide was upside down, clinging with one hand to the rail as she desperately scrabbled for a hold with the other.

  ‘Grandma! Help!’

  Grandma X didn’t move. Jaide whipped back and forth like a flag in the growing storm. If she let go, she’d be blown halfway across the town – maybe further! She closed her eyes tightly, afraid to look at the ground, and called for her grandmother’s help again.