Troubletwisters

by Garth Nix

  ‘Whoa,’ said Hector, reeling them back into his tight embrace. They felt his Gift warring with theirs, trying to bring them under control. For a moment it looked as though he might lose, even with a father’s strength and determination, until Custer put his hand on Hector’s shoulder.

  The men strained against the wild, fierce power of the twins. Custer’s hand grew thicker, stronger. A tiger’s paw dug into Hector’s shoulder, prompting a wince of pain. Blood trickled down the inside of Hector’s shirt.

  Slowly, the adult Wardens prevailed. The wild wind around the lighthouse calmed, and the darkness receded. Jack and Jaide felt their Gifts settle back into place, raw and ready to rise up at the slightest provocation, but contained. For the moment.

  ‘That ward’s amplifying things rather too much. Let’s damp that down a little, shall we?’ said Custer. ‘Now, where has she put that pesky thing?’

  He went outside and leaned across to tap the shining graffiti with one neatly trimmed fingernail. The light flickered and faded away. ‘There’s been quite enough excitement around here for one night, by the look of things.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Hector, adding significantly but without explanation: ‘Twins, eh?’

  ‘Aye.’ Custer nodded. A look of intense sadness flickered across his face, and then vanished.

  ‘Well, I’d better get the kids home, where they belong, and just make sure my mother is all right,’ said Hector. ‘Will you watch here, for the moment? Tidy up whatever you can?’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘Thanks for coming so quickly.’

  ‘Anytime, my friend.’

  ‘And if anyone should ask, you didn’t see me, okay?’

  Custer tapped the side of his nose with old-fashioned solemnity.

  Hector ushered the twins down the stairs ahead of him. It was difficult to talk over the ringing echoes of their footfalls. Manic moths, confused spiders and cockroaches, and a few bewildered mice made their descent even more unpleasant. By the time they reached the bottom, the twins were too exhausted to think of much beyond their longed-for beds.

  But they still had questions.

  ‘Where did you come from again?’ asked Jack.

  ‘I told you. Venice.’

  ‘The Venice? In Italy?’

  ‘Is there any other?’

  ‘There are lots of Portlands,’ said Jaide.

  ‘Ah, but none like this Portland.’

  With a hand on the small of their backs, he guided them across the car park and through the headstones. The rain had started again, but it was only a drizzle, and the icy chill of it had eased.

  Though he’d said he wasn’t worried about his mother, Hector kept up a cracking pace, and the closer they got to the house, the quicker he walked, the twins having to really stretch out to keep up.

  ‘It’s good to see you both,’ Hector said as they half-jogged, half-walked through the drizzle. ‘Even under such circumstances. I’ve missed you.’

  ‘So why did you go away?’ asked Jack.

  ‘And why can’t anyone know you’re here?’ asked Jaide.

  ‘It’s the curse of being a Warden,’ he said, ‘and the parent of troubletwisters. Your Gifts can give you amazing powers, but they are not safe and easy, and rarely can be used without consequences, particularly with other Wardens around. You have to be careful. More troubletwisters have died or fallen as a result of mishandling their own Gifts than have been simply taken by The Evil, and parents are often, inadvertently of course, the cause of that. Until your Gifts are under control, you could harm yourselves, each other, or those you love.’

  The twins nodded thoughtfully. They were beginning to understand that – and to have a clearer idea of exactly what had happened the day their house had exploded.

  Their Gifts had awakened, drawing The Evil to them, and when Hector had intervened those very same uncontrolled Gifts had nearly killed them all.

  ‘But why didn’t you tell us before?’ asked Jaide again. ‘Why didn’t we come to Portland until now?’

  He sighed. ‘That was your mother’s choice, and my mistake. When we met, she didn’t know what I was, and I didn’t tell her. It wasn’t until you two were on the way that I knew I had to fess up. Your mother wasn’t happy, and she was afraid for you. She wanted a normal life. She wanted nothing to do with my world . . . with all this.’

  He waved a hand, encompassing the night, the dissipating storm, and the house ahead.

  ‘I tried,’ he said. ‘I really tried, but nature can’t be repressed, and a Warden’s work is never done. It was bad luck that I returned from a Warden quest when your powers were full to bursting – but something would have happened eventually.’

  ‘And The Evil would have come,’ said Jack, remembering the staring white eyes in his parents’ bedroom.

  ‘Yes. It always comes, whenever it can find a chink between its world and ours,’ said Hector. ‘We must always fight it off, for our sakes, and for the sake of your mother and the billions like her. Almost there!’

  Behind them, the beam of light from the lighthouse suddenly flashed on and swung over the town. Hector and the twins glanced back, and Hector smiled.

  ‘You know, I broke my leg in that old lighthouse when I was your age. I’ve still got the scar.’

  ‘But you always told us you were flying a kite,’ said Jaide indignantly, who had heard the story a thousand times and knew a sudden change of subject when she heard it. ‘You never mentioned the lighthouse!’

  ‘I was flying a kite, more or less,’ he said. ‘But I never told you before about the electrical storm we . . . I summoned. I was lucky I only broke my leg. I could have been electrocuted – or caught by The Evil. My lightning weakened the ward, and it . . . The Evil had been waiting for that opportunity.’

  Jaide thought about this and felt a stab of guilt. Had she and Jack done something to weaken the ward in the first place? For Jack this was already a familiar anxiety, having had it suggested to him by The Evil. He was thinking back to his father’s arrival. It wasn’t the first time Hector’s reappearance was associated with a thunderstorm.

  ‘But you learned to use the lightning?’ he asked his father, full of wonder. Moving in shadows was pretty good, but it was nowhere near as excellent as travelling by lightning, all the way from the other side of the world.

  ‘Yes. It’s not easy and it has its risks. Don’t even think about trying it,’ Hector cautioned as they ran up the front steps and into the house. ‘In fact, I want you to promise me something. It’s not terribly fair of me to ask you this, since I was never very good at it myself, but it’s important, and I hope you’ll do it for me.’

  ‘What is it?’ asked Jack and Jaide together.

  ‘Let me just check on Mother and then —’

  ‘I’m fine, Hector, thank you,’ said Grandma X. Her sudden appearance at the top of the stairs made Jack and Jaide jump nervously. She started to come down, a cat on either side of her. Ari’s tail stood up like an aerial apart from a one-inch kink at the end, and Kleo’s back fur was frizzed as though with static electricity. The wildness of Grandma X’s hair was a match for the look in her eyes.

  ‘I’m not sure it is wise of you to visit,’ continued Grandma X. ‘Given the troubletwisting that has already gone on —’

  She stopped and cocked her head to one side and the cats’ ears flicked up.

  A moment later they all heard the squeal of tyres as a car turned in to the wet, cobbled road.

  ‘Ah, I expect that will be Susan,’ said Grandma X.

  Hector looked at the door, indecision obvious on his face.

  ‘She can’t know what happened,’ said Hector. Grandma X nodded, and he hurried Jack and Jaide through the back door and into the yard. He stood with them for a moment under the trees and put a hand on each of their shoulders.

  ‘Now, that promise . . . I want you to do everything your grandma says, no matter how weird it sounds. Do you understand? I ask you both as your father and as a W
arden. Your lives – and the life of our family – depend on it.’

  ‘So she’ll teach us about becoming Wardens?’ asked Jaide.

  ‘Yes, and you’ll teach her a thing or two, I bet.’

  He smiled, but Jack wasn’t willing to laugh just yet.

  ‘I wish you could teach us.’

  ‘So do I, but having me around would only throw you off. And the lessons are hard to learn, and often the teacher has to be very strict. I’m not sure I have the stomach for it, to be honest. I’d want to protect you . . . both of you . . . and that’s not the way it works.’

  He might have said more, but Susan’s car was already skidding to a sudden halt on the gravel drive.

  ‘Promise me!’ said Hector urgently.

  ‘All right,’ said Jack.

  ‘Jaide, what do you say? Quickly!’

  She had never seen her father so agitated. ‘Yes, I promise, but —’

  ‘I love you both.’ He kissed the twins on their foreheads and backed away. ‘Remember that, and stay where you are. You might want to cover your eyes, too.’

  Neither twin so much as blinked as their father pulled a pitted metal rod with a sharp end from his coat pocket. They both recognised it as the one they had found in his suitcase that fateful day when their Gifts had woken. Holding it in his right hand, Hector made several quick passes across his body, each of which left a pale blue line hanging in the air. The lines formed a complex sigil that, once completed, began to shimmer like heat haze. The purple glow returned. Hector Shield raised the rod above his head with both hands and braced himself.

  ‘Who in an orchestra is most likely to be struck by lightning?’ he called to his children. ‘The conductor. Get i —?’

  He vanished into a flash of bright blue energy, and once again deep thunder rocked the town.

  On the other side of the house, a car door slammed. The sound acted like a starter’s pistol for the twins. They sprinted back inside and up past Grandma X, the cats jumping aside to make room. They ran to the bathroom on their floor and stripped off their wet clothes, towelled their hair dry, and leaped into pyjamas.

  ‘Is that you, Susan?’ Grandma X’s voice floated up to them. ‘What’s going on?’

  The cats came into the bedroom as Jack and Jaide hurled themselves into their beds and mussed up the covers.

  ‘She woke up when the ward was restored,’ said Kleo to the twins. ‘I didn’t have time to tell her everything.’

  ‘Are congratulations in order?’ asked Ari, his penetrating gaze darting from one twin to the other. ‘Or was it your father’s work?’

  ‘We did it, but there’s no time to tell you about it now,’ said Jack. He was more worried about his mother and what she might say to Grandma X.

  Right on cue, Susan came in. She was wearing her emergency services uniform, and a radio squawked at her belt, but she ignored it. Grandma X followed her. Her feet were bare under her dressing-gown, and for the first time Jaide noticed she had silver rings on her toes.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Susan asked. ‘Was it . . . was it something to do with . . . did you make it happen?’

  ‘Make what happen, Susan?’ asked Grandma X. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘You know very well!’ The words tumbled out of her in a rush. ‘They’ve declared a natural disaster in the town. Some kind of localised hurricane, they said, but I knew better.’

  ‘We’re fine,’ said Jaide. Jack nodded and gave a very unconvincing yawn.

  Susan dragged them out of their beds into the middle of the room, where she drew them into a very tight hug.

  ‘I’m so glad you’re all right. I’ve been so worried. You don’t have to be afraid now. You’re safe.’

  They returned the hug, feeling in its tightness the panic their mother had suffered. They wanted to tell her the truth, but knew she would never understand.

  ‘It’s okay, Mum,’ said Jaide reassuringly. ‘Just a big storm. We slept through most of it.’

  ‘Really, we did,’ said Jack, catching Grandma X’s eye over his mother’s shoulder. ‘It wasn’t scary at all.’

  ‘Really?’

  Susan pulled back slightly and looked each child directly in the eye. They knew that procedure: she was looking for any sign of fibbing. It was only then that both twins realised that they were fibbing – to protect her from worrying, but also to stop her from taking them away from Portland and their grandmother, where they needed to be if they were ever to get their Gifts under control.

  ‘Honest, Mum,’ said Jack.

  Jaide added, for the appearance of it, ‘You’re such a worrywart.’

  ‘I had no idea this morning, Susan,’ Grandma X said calmly, ‘that the weather would turn like this. Otherwise I would never have let the kids out of my sight.’

  ‘Of course not,’ Susan said, letting the twins go at last. ‘I heard they closed the school.’

  ‘Not to worry. I was happy to pick them up when Mr Carver called. Come to the kitchen, Susan,’ Grandma X said. ‘You look frozen through. I’ll make you something hot.’

  ‘Well, all right, but I can’t stay long. I’ve volunteered to help out the local squad. The flood has ripped up trees and washed cars away, and a couple of roofs have come off . . .’

  The twins followed their mother, the cats and Grandma X to the kitchen. Grandma X turned on the radio, then bent to light the stove. The twins and their mother listened to a very excited voice reporting that an enormous pile of sea life had been deposited near the lighthouse by a freak waterspout.

  ‘I hope life isn’t always this . . . interesting . . . in Portland,’ said Susan with a weak smile.

  ‘The twins will be safe with me,’ Grandma X promised.

  The voice on the radio carried on about the town’s sole missing person, who had just been found near the lighthouse and who, though apparently injured, had refused treatment before hurrying away. Jaide hardly registered the woman’s name, Renita Daniels, before Susan turned the volume down and gave her children another hug.

  ‘Back to bed for you, I think,’ she said to them. ‘I’m so glad you’re safe.’

  ‘I’ll fix you some hot chocolate, Susan,’ said Grandma X, with a knowing glance at the twins. ‘Good night.’

  The twins kissed their mother and dutifully headed upstairs to the room they guessed they should now think of as their own. A dose of Grandma X’s memory-erasing potion might not ease their mother’s anxieties about Wardens and Hector and their house blowing up, but it would at least make her forget about that morning.

  The less she knew about their new life in Portland, the better.

  THE CATS FOLLOWED THE TWINS back to the bedroom and jumped up onto the beds, Ari at Jaide’s feet and Kleo at Jack’s.

  ‘Don’t think you can go to sleep without telling us exactly what happened,’ said Kleo bossily.

  ‘We really would like to know,’ said Ari, in more conciliatory tones.

  ‘All right,’ said Jaide.

  They were still talking when Grandma X tapped quietly on the door and then poked her head around.

  ‘Well done, troubletwisters,’ she said.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ Jaide asked.

  ‘Considerably better than I did earlier, thank you, Jaidith.’

  Grandma X came in and picked up their dirty clothes, wrinkling her nose as she lifted Jack’s shirt.

  ‘That singed smell is so distinctive . . . It is such a pity Hector couldn’t stay. But that’s the way it must be.’ She pulled a regretful face, and the twins knew that she missed her son just as much as they missed their father. ‘Now, I see you have been in my antique shop.’

  ‘We only went in to —’ Jack began, but Grandma X held up her hand.

  ‘You did what was necessary, in the grand tradition of Wardens, and you did so in a very messy way, in the less grand tradition of troubletwisters.’

  ‘What happened to the music box?’ asked Jaide. The cats had already told her that when it had stopped
, The Evil had attacked the house, but the rats and insects hadn’t got in before the ward was replaced.

  ‘It is now merely a very fine early eighteenth-century music box, and nothing more,’ said Grandma X. ‘So I will sell it on eBay.’

  ‘That crocodile skull took off the end of my finger,’ said Jaide, brandishing her bandage. She’d forgotten about it in the events of the night, but now it was starting to really hurt again.

  ‘The Oracular Crocodile is something of a trickster,’ said Grandma X. ‘You only need to give it a drop of blood, dripped from a spoon or the like. Never let it actually bite you. We’d best have that seen to in the morning, in case it festers. You might need a stitch or two.’

  Jaide pulled a face. She was generally brave when it came to doctors, except where needles were concerned.

  From the pocket of her dressing-gown, Grandma X pulled the brass compass the troubletwisters had played with in the drawing room the day she had tested them to see where their Gifts might lie.

  ‘I can also tell from this that there has been a change in the wards. Didn’t you get my message about the plaque?’

  ‘We did,’ said Jaide, ‘and we tried to fix it.’

  ‘But The Evil stopped us,’ said Jack, ‘and so we had to make a new ward instead.’

  Grandma X raised her eyebrows. ‘Just like that?’

  ‘Well, we don’t really know how we did it . . .’

  ‘Only that we did,’ said Jaide. ‘Custer checked it and everything was fine. Did we do something wrong?’

  ‘Not at all, not at all. You simply did something very difficult, something that normally takes years of practice and an astonishingly well-matched pair of Wardens to achieve. It always takes two, you see, to ensure the new ward is completely secure.’

  ‘We’re twins,’ said Jack brightly. ‘That must be why it worked for us.’

  ‘Indeed. But in that regard you are not unique. All troubletwisters are twins, but not all twins are troubletwisters.’