Back To The Divide (36 page)

356

the plum tree: nothing but a plum tree. He leaned against the trunk, let himself slide down to the ground, and felt his eyes fill with tears.

Betony came and sat down opposite him on the grass, cross-legged. They stayed like that for a while, neither of them speaking.

Finally Betony said, "I need to think about this," and the two of them got up and went back into the house. "It doesn't add up," she went on. "Not
everything
disappearing -- you said there were lots of little things that had been affected as well, didn't you?"

"The spell must have worn off," said Felix, desperately wanting to believe it. "But where
are
they? No one's been here since I left; the lawn hasn't been mown for a couple of weeks and the houseplants haven't been watered. Maybe they've gone off somewhere, looking for
me."

"Spells like that don't just wear off," said Betony bitterly. "What about my parents? You're not the only one this has ever happened to, remember?"

Felix wasn't listening. "There's somewhere I haven't tried," he said suddenly. "The garage." He opened the hall door that led to it -- but to his intense disappointment the car was still there, so his parents hadn't driven off in it. He went back into the hall.

Betony pointed at the light flickering on the answering machine. "What's that?"

"Voice messages," said Felix, turning it on and fast-forwarding

357

through the boring ones. It quickly became clear that his parents hadn't contacted anyone at all; his uncle was annoyed with his father for missing a game of golf, and his mother's hairdresser had rung to complain about a forgotten appointment. It was lucky that his father was a lecturer and his mother a teacher -- no one thought it particularly odd that they'd suddenly decided to go away for two weeks during the summer vacation without telling anyone. There were several messages for Felix himself, from friends, asking where he was and whether he'd gone somewhere even more interesting than Costa Rica this year. He felt the despair begin to overwhelm him. "Supposing the spell makes everything eventually disappear over here? For good?" He was having trouble keeping his voice steady.

Betony went over to an ornamental candle standing on the mantelpiece and lit it with a wave of her hand. Then she blew it out again. "I don't think there's any difference between over here and over there," she said. "Nimby can fly, and the candle lights. It's a pity your parents aren't royalty, or we could have found them really quickly." She made a face all of a sudden and rubbed her stomach. "Felix, we haven't eaten anything for
ages.
We need to think clearly, and personally, I don't think that clearly when I'm starving."

"There'll be something in the fridge," said Felix, and they went back into the kitchen. The moment he saw the splintered wood on the floor again, a new train of thought entered his head. "There's been a break-in," he said. "That's it.

358

They've been stolen. They'd be worth quite a bit -- solid marble statues." But at the same time he couldn't help thinking -- who would want a sculpture of a woman playing cricket and a man taking a cell phone out of his pocket?

"Then why didn't the thief turn into marble, too?"

"I don't know!" shouted Felix, the frustration taking him to boiling point.

"Make something to eat," said Betony. "I've got the egg of an idea, but I need to
think."

"What idea?"

"Felix, shut
up
and let me incubate it."

"But ..."

Betony glared at him, so he opened the fridge. The milk had gone bad, the ham had turned green, and there was a puddle of liquid lettuce in the salad compartment. He found some premade meals in the freezer instead and heated them up in the microwave. Betony's eyes widened at the whole procedure, but she didn't ask any questions, since Felix was too strung out to hold a normal conversation. They ate in silence.

Eventually Betony pushed her plate away and said, "That was
very
strange. What was it?"

"Pasta." He wasn't in the mood to go into further detail, but he was up to a bit of sarcasm. "Has your egg hatched yet?" he asked.

Betony glared at him. "I don't make fun of
your
expressions, and you've got some really stupid ones -- sorry, featherbrained ones. As if anyone would use a brazzle as an

359

example of stupidity. Now, you know I've spent the last year helping Thornbeak with some research into magic of the past? Toadstool location spells, that sort of thing?" Felix nodded.

"Have you still got the marble snail?"

"
Yes."
He was beginning to see where this was leading. "Right. I know the incantation -- it's a simple one. We just need to fix it on the sort of thing we're looking for."

"Oh, that's brilliant."

"Hold on," said Betony, pushing the blond hair back from her face. "What the old sorcerers used was a little spike of metal. We don't know what metal it was, though. They used to float it on a piece of cork in a dish of water, and it would point in the right direction. They used some sort of force that's been forgotten."

"Magnetism!" cried Felix. "They made a compass!" He unfastened the one around his neck, which had hung there for the last month. "Let's try it." He gave it a quick wipe with his sleeve, since it was rather grubby.

Betony looked at it. "How do we get at the metal bit? It's all enclosed in that transparent stuff. We need the snail to actually
touch
it."

"I'll break it open," said Felix, and he ran out to the garage where his father kept his tools, found a screwdriver and a pair of pliers, and pried off the plastic casing. He found Betony some leather gloves to protect her skin, opened the matchbox, and tipped the snail onto the table.

360

Betony picked it up and stroked the marble against the compass needle. Her eyes were screwed tightly shut with concentration and her lips moving slightly as she recited the words in her head. Then she opened her eyes, sat back, and waited.

They both watched the compass for what seemed like a long time. Felix crossed his fingers, then uncrossed them again because he wasn't superstitious and it was silly. The needle shivered slightly. Then, quite suddenly, it swung in one direction, and then the other. For a while it oscillated wildly, apparently unable to make up its mind where to go.

"Supposing the statues are in two different places?" Felix whispered. "What would it do?"

Betony shook her head. "I don't know. Point to the closest one, I'd imagine."

Gradually the violent movements subsided, and the needle came to rest.

"That way, then," said Betony, pointing south.

"But how
far
that way?"

"I don't know."

"It could be miles and miles."

"We've got a carpet."

Felix had forgotten they had their own transportation. "Come on, then," he said, getting to his feet.

"Felix, it's getting dark. Nimby can't fly at night."

Felix groaned with impatience. "It's not
fair.
We come all this way ..."

361

"An hour ago you thought your parents had disappeared forever. But they can't have, or the compass wouldn't be showing us where they are. Let's get a good night's sleep and start off in the morning."

"We'll have to avoid the rush hour," said Felix grimly, knowing perfectly well Betony wouldn't have a clue what he was talking about.

Betony gave him a filthy look. "You want me to ask whether that
featherbrained
expression has anything to do with making rush mats so that you can laugh at me, don't you? Well, I'm not going to. I know," she said, suspecting that the best course of action might be a
distraction,
"show me that television thing you've told me about."

Felix's anger suddenly seemed to melt away. He had a whole evening with Betony in
his
world; he would be a fool to waste it. "OK," he said.

He channel-hopped for a while, finding her a soap, a news program, a talk show, a documentary about tigers. She wasn't quite as impressed as he'd expected.

"It's not like going out looking for real tigers, is it?" she said. "The filmmaker's done that already -- all you're seeing is what he's already recorded. Where's the excitement in
that?"

He took her up to his room and turned on his computer, and she typed out a couple of spells. He printed them out in green, in a handwriting font -- and that did astonish her.
"Blazing feathers,"
she said, "did I write that? It's neater than anything a scribe could do."

362

Felix laughed and they went around the house together, switching all the different appliances on and off. He took out a photograph album and briefly explained how a camera works. She giggled at pictures of him as a baby and stared in wonder at snaps taken of him at the 200 on an elephant. He remembered his own camera and took some photographs of
her.
His mother's cell phone was still in her bag -- he felt a bit intrusive going through her things, but a cell phone might come in handy the following day. He had some fun sending a few text messages to his friends, who were delighted to hear from him and sent a few back.

"Felix," said Betony, looking at the packed bookshelves. "Last year you said something about your civilization going from flint arrowheads and stone circles to bombs and cathedrals. Do you have any history books -- with pictures?"

"Yes, loads." He lifted one down and started to give her a history lesson, full of pyramids and amphitheaters and cannons and tanks.

"Your world's past is very violent, isn't it?" she said.

"History is written by the winning side," he quipped. "And the winning side likes to exaggerate its victories and the enemy's defeats."

She thought for a moment. Then she said, "We don't have winning sides or losing sides. Our history is about the development of magic, natural disasters, renegade beasts."

"Ours is mainly battles."

363

"If history's written by the winning side," said Betony, "they can say what they like about the other lot, can't they?"

Felix grinned. "You'd be a good historian whichever world you were in, Betony."

He made her up a bed in the spare room and showed her how the shower worked.

"My clothes are filthy," she said, looking at them with distaste.

"Right," said Felix, "you're not that much smaller than my mother. Come on, we'll find you some human stuff to wear tomorrow."

Betony stared at him. "Won't she mind?"

Felix smiled. "She's really nice, my mom," he said. "If she were here I bet she'd suggest it herself."

Betony was awestruck at the different fabrics and colors and styles. "I've never worn anything except green," she said, choosing some black pants and a red shirt.

Felix put Betony's clothes in the washing machine. Then they each had a cup of hot chocolate and discussed their plan of action for the following day.

"How many other spells do you know by heart?" asked Felix. "There may be something we can use, if things get difficult."

Betony made a face. "Not that many -- I can cure bruises, and light candles, and I know an illusion spell. All kids catch on to illusion spells eventually; they're the basis of a lot of party tricks, so they don't work on grown-ups.

364

[Image: Betony and Felix.]

They probably would over here, though, with people who've never been bewitched before. They're not terribly powerful spells -- you can only make people believe a certain amount of information."

"Could we freeze people, with the first half of the Divide spell?"

"It wouldn't work without a Divide."

They talked strategies for a bit longer, and then they went to bed. It had been a fun evening in the end, considering the circumstances. Felix hoped the next day would be even better. He wanted to see his parents alive and well so badly -- and he really wanted them to meet Betony, too.

365

But he spent a restless night, dreaming of broken statues and missing chunks of marble and three-dimensional jigsaw puzzles.

The next morning they had breakfast as Nimby lay stretched out on the patio, absorbing the sunlight. Felix had defrosted some milk, so that he could serve up cereal.

"It tastes like tree bark," said Betony, making a face, so Felix made some toast instead.

They waited until the rush hour had passed. Then they climbed aboard the carpet and took off.

After half an hour the compass needle had started to whiz around and around, as though it no longer knew which way to point. They were flying over a big building, and once they were past it the needle steadied -- but pointing in the opposite direction from the one it had taken before.

"That's it, then," said Betony. "The statues must be in there somewhere."

They went back. The whole complex seemed very security-conscious. The service road had a barrier, with an attendant in uniform in a little yellow sentry box. Felix had glimpsed the main doors as they flew over, which had an entry phone. There was a prominent alarm system on the wall above, along with a closed-circuit TV camera. Once again, though, no one had noticed them. People just didn't look up. They landed on a balcony, selecting the one about which the compass was most enthusiastic.