The Sword of Straw Read online

  The next day, when Nathan telephoned from school, she asked him: “Are you dreaming again? About—another world?”

  “A bit,” he conceded after a pause.

  “Take care,” she said, “won’t you?”

  “Yes, Mum. There’s no danger, honestly.” Except the Urdemons…

  But Annie knew without being told that there was always danger, and it wasn’t in Nathan’s nature to take care.

  At Crowford Comprehensive, Hazel saw Jonas Tyler and Ellen Carver talking in the corridor after English, and her heart quailed.

  “Don’t know what she sees in him,” another girl said, but Hazel knew, and gloried in the knowing, because seeing something in him was her secret, and even Ellen Carver would never see what she saw. The hidden sorrow that he bore, the mystery behind his infrequent smile, and the blue of his eyes. (He smiled more often when he was talking to Ellen, but Hazel told herself that was forced.)

  Back at home she looked again at Effie’s notebook, and the hand-labeled bottles, but still she hesitated. There was a poem she vaguely remembered from an anthology she had read with Nathan when she was a child, the usual sort of nursery doggerel, but the underlying horror in it had made a strong impression on her. In it there was a woman or girl, sitting alone and lonely, wishing—and a body came in to join her, piece by piece, starting with the feet and working up. But at the climax of each verse: “Still she sat, and still she sighed, and still she wished for company.” When all the body was there, something unpleasant happened to the girl, Hazel couldn’t recall exactly what, except that it was nasty. Perhaps she got eaten. Anyway, she couldn’t help feeling she was in a similar position. Still she sat, and still she sighed, and still she wished for company… Fairy tales, cleaned up for Victorian consumption, might tell you that if you rubbed a lamp you would get a genie who would obey your every command, but Hazel knew better. Wish fulfillment always had its price, and the price was always more than you wanted to pay.

  She didn’t trust magic, even if it worked. Especially if it worked. She didn’t trust Lilliat, with her silver-blue eyes and the unnatural breeze in her hair. Lilliat had called her price trivial, but in her heart Hazel knew what was being asked of her, and it was too much. Even for the infrequent smiles of Jonas Tyler. Besides, what was the point of attracting him by magic? One day the magic would fade, and there would be no reality underneath. Or so she told herself, struggling for rationality. (But one day was in the future, and for a teenager the future was too remote to touch the urgency of present desire.)

  Still she sat, and still she sighed…

  She wished for Nathan, to take her mind off things, but Nathan wasn’t there.

  The evenings were growing longer now, and she went for a walk in the woods by way of distraction, because there was no witch paraphernalia out there to tempt her. When she was much younger and her father was still at home she used to run to the woods to be alone, sometimes climbing a tree and staying up there for hours, wrapped in the quiet and the privacy of her leaf-bound world. Now that she was older and her father had gone she preferred her bedroom, but today the lure of the woods drew her back. She found her favorite tree and scrambled up into the branches, just to prove she still could. And then somehow it was easy to lapse into her former quiescence, back against the tree trunk, legs crooked, pulling the hush of leaf murmur and wind murmur around her like a cloak. She felt her self merging with the self of the tree, becoming bark and root, sap and acorn, reaching deep, deep into the darkness of the earth, listening to the sound of growing, and burrowing, and the tingle of new life uncurling and groping toward the light. And then she was stretching up to the sky, straining with twig tip and leaf tip to reach the sun. She didn’t know that this oneness with things was a part of the power she feared to indulge; all she knew was that it made her feel peaceful, and somehow complete. The tiny denizens of the treetops came close to her, untroubled by her presence; a squirrel scurried over her thigh.

  Presently, she saw the woodwose.

  She had met him once or twice before, but only with Nathan, who had been his friend from infancy. She knew he was very shy. He was a stick-thin creature only a few feet high, with a pointy face all nose and the sideways eyes of an animal. His voice was as soft as a rustle in the leafmold; his movements, altogether noiseless. She didn’t hear him approach; rather, she became aware of him, one twig pattern among many, perched on a nearby bough, watching her. Perhaps he had been there all the time.

  It was a long while before he spoke.

  “Tell Nathan…”

  “Yes?”

  “He’s here. Hiding in woods, skulking behind bushes. Spying on the house where the wise man lives. He kills rabbits with sling-stones and eats them. I don’t know what he wants, but he won’t go away.”

  “Who?” Hazel asked, quiet as a breath.

  “Him. The hairy one from down in the valley, where the old old house used to be. You let him out, you and Nathan. He stole the thing, and ran away, but he didn’t go far. He sleeps in a fox’s hole, down in the Darkwood. I think he strangled the fox. Tell Nathan.”

  The dwarf, Hazel thought, remembering the curious little man she and Nathan had inadvertently released from his underground prison—someone who, Bartlemy claimed, might once have been the assistant to Josevius Grimthorn. He had stolen the Grail and thrust it back into its native world, though no one knew why.

  “I’ll tell him,” Hazel promised.

  The woodwose gave a tiny nod of acknowledgment. “He likes to know…everything that happens here,” he elaborated unexpectedly. “I watch. I listen. I wait for him. He doesn’t come now for many months, but I’m still here. Tell him…”

  “He has to go away to school,” Hazel said. “Even on weekends he has homework, rugger matches, cricket matches, stuff like that. He can’t always find time for everyone.” She hadn’t seen so much of Nathan that year, and although she knew it wasn’t his fault the woodwose’s words stirred a tiny niggle of resentment. Woody, Nathan had told her, had been his playfellow when he was little more than a baby, an imaginary friend who wasn’t imaginary, tugged from some lost universe in childish innocence for companionship and games, unable to return to wherever he had come from. We’re Nathan’s closest friends, Hazel thought, and now we’re both neglected.

  She said: “I’ll come back. If you like.”

  Woody considered her offer in silence. “Do you have Smarties?” he asked at last. “Nathan used to bring Smarties.”

  “I can get some,” Hazel said.

  NATHAN HADN’T dreamed about the princess for nearly three weeks, and he was desperate to find her again, to help her or merely to see her—there was little help he could offer in his insubstantial dream state, but he was sure that soon he would begin to materialize, because that was the pattern his dreams had followed in the past. He saw Hazel that weekend only briefly, pleading homework and tiredness. She told him about Woody and the dwarf, and he was pleased she had formed a bond with the woodwose; somehow, it excused him from having to spend precious time with either of them. Not that he saw it that way—his dreams filled his thoughts, and he wasn’t seeing anything very clearly. He tried to help her with her math, but, sensing his reluctance, she made less effort, and in the end he gave her the answers without an explanation, taking a shortcut because he was in a hurry to leave.

  “I need an early night,” he said.

  “Are you dreaming again?” she asked, picking up—like Bartlemy, like his mother—the meaning behind the words.

  “Yes.” He didn’t temporize, not with Hazel. “I’ll tell you about it another time. I don’t know enough yet. It’s a new place, a new world…”

  “Can’t you dream me with you?”

  “No. I mean, it would be dangerous—you could get trapped there—and anyway, I don’t have that much control.”

  You could if you wanted to, Hazel thought, suddenly convinced of it, and when he had gone she sat for a long time, her mind stuck on a single thought, going
nowhere.

  Nathan, meanwhile, went to bed early and, inevitably, couldn’t sleep, let alone dream. He didn’t want to risk probing the frontier of his own volition—it might only transport him to Eos—so he sat up reading till the words ran together and he hoped exhaustion would take over, slipping across the borderland into slumber only after what seemed like hours of weary wakefulness. Even then he woke again after a short period when his dreams were commonplace and unmemorable, slept and woke and slept again. And now, at last, his sleep was deep enough, and the portal in his head opened, and his soul poured through.

  He dreamed. Not of the princess as he had wished, nor of the city on two hills. He dreamed of the Grandir, the white-masked ruler of Eos: broken visions of him all jumbled together. The Grandir in his semicircular office high above the city, gazing out between the screens at the panorama of sunset, the western sky all fire and blood, and to the east the light reflected in a million windows, so the city sparkled like a monstrous piece of jewelry. A mounted xaurian flew past, unusually close, its hooked wingspan slicing the image in two, its bluish body turned to mauve in the glow. Then the scene changed, and the Grandir was in his secret chamber where the star-globes floated in darkness, compressed spheres of interdimensional space existing both in that world and in others, projecting onto the ceiling, as on a screen, glimpses of alternative universes. One of them hung in the sky above the bookshop, a star hidden among the stars, watching over Nathan and his mother—or spying on them. And then the Grandir was walking down a corridor toward a door marked DANGER—it slid back automatically and there was the underground laboratory, and in a huge cage to the right was something so horrible Nathan drew back, not wanting to see it, feeling the horror of it from a distance and struggling to pull out of the dream…

  Everything changed. He was in a gray daylit room plentifully layered with dust and shadows—the cleaners had obviously gone with everyone else, taking their brooms and brushes with them. On a table by the window was an enormous open book, the reader’s place marked with a spoon. Nearby, someone silhouetted against the light was pouring things from one bottle into another, from bottle to jar, from jar to bowl. Occasionally the mixture thus produced would change color, or give off a tiny puff of purple smoke, or the sound of birds singing, or an eye-watering variety of smells. A diminutive oil lamp with a naked flame, currently pale green, stood at hand; every so often the man would lift bottle or jar in a pair of tongs and warm it over the flame, whereupon the contents would bubble, or steam, or scream, until removed. As Nathan drew nearer he saw the man had a fluff of thistledown hair and very mobile eyebrows that soared in excitement and plunged in doubt according to the progress of his experiments. Frimbolus Quayne.

  Nathan was eager to talk to him but it was no good; though his sinuses smarted from one of the smells he still felt hopelessly insubstantial. Nonetheless, when the door opened he drew back instinctively into the shadows, well away from the window. The woman who walked in—or rather, bustled; she was plainly the sort of person who bustled a lot—was the princess’s nurse, Mrs. Prendergoose.

  She started to speak, but Frimbolus held up a hand. “Hush, woman! I am doing something very important. It needs the utmost concentration…” He held a glass jar over the flame and carefully added a single drop of liquid from a vial, which smoked. Inside the jar there was a small—a very small—explosion. When things settled down, what remained appeared to be fluid, lime green, and phosphorescent. “Blinkus!” Frimbolus swore. “Ah well, I didn’t really think it would work. But it was worth a try. Madam, what can I do for you?”

  Mrs. Prendergoose didn’t look as though she liked being called madam—clearly she felt it had offensive undertones—but she got straight to the point. “I want to talk to you,” she said, “about the princess.”

  “What about her?”

  “She’s not a child anymore, she’s a young lady—”

  “Dear me, is she?”

  “—and a pretty young lady, too, or she would be, if she got the chance to prettify herself a bit. Instead—look at her! Her dresses are all in tatters and we can’t get the material here to make new ones—her hair’s always in a tangle no matter how hard I brush it—she sits around in the gloom all day worrying about Urdemons and the state of the kingdom when she should be choosing her gown for a party—she never gets to meet anyone or go anywhere…”

  “What do you suggest we do to remedy these ills?” Frimbolus inquired.

  “She needs to get away—right away. She could go to her uncle, the duke of Quilp, or those cousins in Marplott—she stayed with them a few years back, and there wasn’t any trouble then.”

  “Trouble?”

  “You know what I mean, don’t pretend you don’t. There wasn’t none of this business with magic and monsters that’s driving the poor child out of her mind—”

  “I thought you said she wasn’t a child?” Frimbolus interrupted.

  Mrs. Prendergoose ignored him. “I’m not saying it’s her fault—she’s the sweetest thing in nature, just growing a bit obstinate—but it wasn’t till she started playing around with magic that them Urdemons turned up: you can’t deny it. There’s got to be a connection, hasn’t there?”

  “Oh yes, there’s a connection,” Frimbolus said, with a wealth of sinister meaning. “That doesn’t mean it’s cause and effect. You’ve been stuffing her head with notions of self-blame, haven’t you? Telling her she’s the plague carrier, the imp among cherubim? Thyrma Prendergoose, if this kingdom was properly run I’d see you executed for treason! As if Nell doesn’t have enough to bear, without shouldering a load of guilt that doesn’t belong to her!”

  “How dare you!” The nurse was shaking with anger. “How dare you talk to me of—of treason! I love the princess, and if you did, too, you’d want what I want for her. If she went away all this magical nonsense would stop—”

  “How do you know that?”

  “The magic’s here, bad magic, it’s common knowledge. Or it would be, if there were any commoners left. The king’s sick, the family’s cursed—cursed with that evil sword they’ve been hanging on to for centuries—a sword that jumps up all by itself and stabs people. A sword like that, what do you expect? That’s where all the bad magic comes from. I won’t have my Nellwyn spending her whole life under a cloud. If she could get away from the sword, she’d get away from the curse. She could have a normal life, be happy…That’s all I want for her.”

  “I believe you,” said Frimbolus rather surprisingly. “That’s what I want for her, too. But running away won’t solve the problem. In any case, she won’t do it. She is a princess, Prendergoose, a true princess, and that means more than you know. She’s brave and generous and kind and as true as steel—that’s what makes her a princess, not a sparkly crown and a ball dress. She won’t leave her father or Carboneck—”

  “She would if you told her to,” the nurse interjected. “She reckons a lot to what you think.” The admission was grudging. “If you said she ought to go, she’d be off quick enough, for certain sure.”

  “Well, I can’t,” Frimbolus said, not mincing words. “Anyhow, you’re wrong. This is her place, you stupid old fussbucket. Her kingdom, her people—or what’s left of them—her problems to solve. Nothing you or I or anyone could say would make her budge. Now, if you’ve nothing more to complain about, I’d be grateful if you’d go away and leave me to get on with my work.”

  “Don’t you go name-calling with me—”

  “I said: Go away! ”

  Pointedly, Frimbolus returned to his experiments. The nurse stared impotently at his back for a few moments, sniffed angrily, then left. Nathan moved out of the shadows toward the old man, wanting to see what he was doing…and Frimbolus wheeled around, stared straight at him, and demanded: “Who—and what—are you?”

  “You can see me!” Nathan gasped, or tried to, but only a squeak of sound came out.

  “What’s that? Speak up, phantom, or be off with you! There’s a high level o
f magic in here; stray spirits tend to show up. I noticed you hovering in the background when I was talking to the Prendergoose. Felt you peering over my shoulder just now, too—gives me a prickle up the spine, having a specter right behind me. Who are you and what’s your business here?”

  But Nathan’s essence in that world was still too flimsy for him to make himself heard. He thought of trying some sort of sign language, but he didn’t know how to convey the message I want to help you in gestures, and he visualized his spirit enacting a kind of ghostly charades, and knew it would be ridiculous. He spaced his hands and shook his head to show his quandary even as the dream receded, and the room blurred, and the last thing he saw was the perplexed expression on Frimbolus’s face.

  He woke the next morning feeling anxious, though he wasn’t sure why. The hint of danger to the princess?—but that was nothing new. His own hazy materialization? Then he remembered. The Grandir’s laboratory, and the thing in the cage that he hadn’t been able to see—the thing whose proximity had filled him with a cold horror, so the mere recollection of it made him shiver. In a cage in that same laboratory the Grandir had kept the gnomons—creatures whose substance was fluid and whose collective mind was under his control, equipped with hypersenses and able to move between worlds. They were invisible here except as a stirring in the leaves, or the patter of following feet on an empty road—but their pursuit was relentless, and when they caught someone they would enter his brain, twisting his thoughts, draining his very self, until he was left a drooling imbecile. They were the guardians of the Grail, intangible yet deadly. Suddenly Nathan found himself wondering if the sword was similarly guarded, and by whom—or what.