Back To The Divide (38 page)

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Felix peered inside. Thornbeak's feather was inside a plastic envelope, labeled with the date Emily had found it and the location. He felt tears of relief prick at his eyelids, and he took it out and stroked it over the page with the spell. The writing reappeared on cue.

Felix put a droplet of the water from the prediction pool on his mother's arm. Then he recited the spell and stood back. The fire alarm suddenly ceased.

"You haven't got time to stand and watch," said Betony. "They'll all come back now, won't they? Those people? Now that the noise has stopped?"

"They'll probably send a fire inspector to take a look first."

A hint of color had returned to his mother's face. Felix turned to his father and repeated the procedure. Then he went to the first packing case and tackled a wasp, a hedgehog, a starling, a mouse, a dragonfly ...

"Look," said Betony.

The smallest creatures were recovering first, and the chain reaction was working in reverse. A snail he hadn't even touched was crawling up the side of the case. He wouldn't have to do each and every creature -- as long as they were touching one another, they'd perform the job themselves. He went to the second case and reanimated a butterfly. The third and final case held a grass snake -- this was ideal, as it was in contact with so many other things. Last of all Felix did the burglars -- he didn't want to have to deal with people who might get angry and violent. Then he looked at the compass

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again. It was pointing back to the office where Emily and Rutherford had been petrified. This, surely, meant that they were the only marble things left untreated. "Felix? Where am I?"

Felix spun around. His mother was standing there, looking uncomprehendingly at the cricket bat in her hands. Her brows furrowed. Then her eyes widened, and she said, "I had this dream ..."

Felix couldn't stop himself -- he had to rush over and give her a hug, and it felt wonderful. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed Betony scowling. He remembered that her parents, too, had been turned to stone, and there wasn't going to be any reunion like this for her -- not for another sixteen years, anyway. He wished the spell could have worked on them, too. He felt a bit guilty and let go of his mother, who seemed a little surprised at his sudden and public demonstration of affection. Betony's scowl had been replaced by a
don't care
expression. Perhaps it was just a
mixed-up
expression, which was how she felt about petrified parents in general.

"Felix?" Felix's father was also looking confused. "What's going on?"

"It's going to take far too long to explain," said Felix. "You're just going to have to trust me. Please?"

Felix's father had spotted a cat that was slowly regaining its color and tentatively flexing a paw. He didn't seem able to take his eyes off it. A vole dashed across the floor and took shelter behind a photocopier. "Impossible as it sounds," he

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said, "we were turned to stone by that appalling man in purple, weren't we? The one who knew something about your disappearance last summer. I was aware of it happening, the stiffness, the coldness. I thought I was dying. And then ... nothing. Until now."

"We need to get out of here," said Felix. "And I'm afraid it has to be by magic carpet. Oh, this is Betony. She's an elf."

Felix's father was now wearing the sort of fixed smile you get when things simply can't get any stranger.

Betony took off her cap so that he could see her ears and said, "Felix is my best-ever friend."

"What in the blazes?" said a gruff voice behind them. This was then followed by a long and imaginative list of swearwords.

"The burglars are coming back to life," said Felix. "Come on, we've got to go."

"But ..." said Felix's mother.

"I think Felix is in charge for the moment," said Felix's father, and Felix felt ten feet tall.

"Leave the door open," said Betony as they went back to the office. "Then some of the animals can get out -- the ones that can fly, anyway."

Even as she spoke, the starling flew past her and out of the open door to the balcony as though the hounds of hell were after it.

"Are we ready to go now?" asked Nimby. "Nearly," said Felix, turning the statues of Emily and Rutherford to face the wall and dropping smidgeons of water

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on to them. He gabbled the spell as rapidly as he could. The last creature he returned to its normal state was the snail. It had served him well, and he put it in one of the window boxes on the balcony.

More swearing was now issuing from the laboratory as the burglars shouted at one another. He heard the door open, as the fire inspector presumably made an entrance, and the sound of a cat yowling.

"What the hell's going on?" someone demanded.

In reply, the speaker was treated to a stream of abuse from three different sources. One of the voices carried on a little longer than the others, shouting about animal rights and declaring that the building should be burned to the ground.

"Let's go," said Felix, and he, Betony, and his parents climbed aboard the carpet.

As Nimby lurched into the air, Felix caught a glimpse of the scene inside the laboratory through the open door. A hedgehog was scurrying across the floor, and dozens of insects were zipping around. A magpie was sitting on a microscope, and a couple of squirrels were running along some storage cabinets and leaping from one to the other. There was a crash and the tinkle of breaking glass from somewhere out of sight. The fire inspector and the burglars were standing there, finally rendered speechless; more animals kept appearing, and the place looked like a zoo. Felix laughed until the tears ran down his face; everything was going to be all right.

Betony told Nimby to get up into the clouds so they

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wouldn't be seen, and the carpet obliged. "This has all been really exciting," he said. "I can't wait to get back to a proper rack and tell some of those doormats what I've been up to."

"I'm still dreaming, aren't I?" said Felix's mother. "It's quite nice this time, though. I've often dreamed I could fly."

"You're not dreaming," said Felix, worried that his mother might simply step off the carpet. "Magic is a reality in other worlds; that's where I went last summer."

"Yes, dear," said his mother, smiling. "Whatever you say."

"I
believe you," said Felix's father quietly. "I think you'd better tell me everything."

So Felix used the trip home to tell his father about the amazing adventures he'd had, while his mother chatted to Betony about dreams.

"Introducing printing was a disaster," Felix told him. "And I only just stopped them from getting the internal combustion engine. You can't discover something, can you? Discoveries are like evolution, they don't work backward. I remember reading somewhere that you can't stop progress. But it wasn't progress, was it?"

"That's a tricky one," said Felix's father. "Progress is in the eye of the beholder. Something may be beneficial in one way and disastrous in another. But discoveries do get lost. Civilizations have come and gone, like the ones in the Americas, and simply left intriguing glimpses of what might have been. We had the Dark Ages in Europe, remember. Sometimes I think that there's a sort of hump civilization has

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to get over before everyone can work for the common good. Perhaps Betony's world can find a way of getting over the hump without it causing too much damage in the process."

Nimby spiraled down like a falling leaf and landed in Felix's garden.

"It's such a relief to have all this out in the open," Felix concluded. "I'd like to go back next summer to visit everyone, you see."

"I don't think so," said Felix's father. "It sounds really dangerous."

"Dangerous?"
said Felix, aghast. "But I'd be dead if I hadn't crossed the Divide. That's where I found the spell that made me better."

"I know," said Felix's father. "But devil-hyenas that rip you to shreds? Heavy-duty wands that incinerate things in a second? Flying around on griffins, without a safety harness? There's no end to the things that could happen to you."

"Please,
Mr. Sanders," said Betony. "Things are going to be much quieter in my world now that Snakeweed's just an exhibit in -- what do you call it -- a theme park."

"I'm sorry," said Felix's father. "I really can't allow it. You're very welcome to visit here, of course, any time you like -- well, not during term-time, Felix has his schooling to consider. But you could come over for Christmas, if you wanted."

"I make the best mince pies you've ever tasted," said Felix's mother. "Do you think I could fly all by myself if I concentrated really hard?"

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"I think you'd better go and have a rest," said Felix's father.

"All right," said Felix's mother cheerfully. She turned to Betony. "Good-bye, dear. It's been nice meeting you. Do you know, I've got a pair of pants and a shirt exactly the same as the ones you're wearing?"

Betony opened her mouth to reply, but Felix's father laid a hand on her arm and shook his head. Felix's mother went back into the house.

"I think it'll be best if she thinks this
was
all a dream," said Felix's father.

"How are you going to explain the missing two weeks?" asked Felix.

"Tell her she's been ill? That she's had a dose of amnesia? If she ends up believing all this she's going to worry about you for the rest of her life. Even when you're grown-up. Every time you're out of touch for any length of time, she'll think you've gone back to the other world and that she'll never see you again."

"Won't you think the same thing?"

"Yes. But I'd feel the same if you decided to become a war correspondent, or foreign aid worker, or a deep-sea diver. And I wouldn't try and stop you from being any of those things, once you're of an age to make an informed decision."

Betony was looking annoyed. "Why are you treating Felix's mother as though she's a wimp?" she demanded.

"Oh, I don't think she's a wimp at all," said Felix's father. "When Felix was ill she was tougher than me. But the difference between her and me is that she lost a brother to

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Mount Everest. Her fears come from real experience, unlike mine, and I don't want her to have to relive them."

Betony nodded and said, "That makes sense. And I could solve the problem with an illusion spell, if you like."

He sighed. "More magic?"

"Magic's like science. Most sorcerers and most scientists are trying to make life better. It's only a few who use it for their own ends."

"All right, then. What will you do?"

"Felix will tell her whatever you want. I'll mutter the spell, and she'll believe it. It can't be too detailed though, because it's a very mild hex and I'll only have a few minutes."

"It sounds a bit like hypnotism."

"It works on a similar principle," said Felix.

They decided that a trip would be the best explanation for their absence from home, and that somewhere they'd already been was a good idea because she'd have all the right memories in place. Eventually they settled on Cornwall; she'd loved the Eden Project, and the Lost Gardens of Heligan, and it was quite believable that they'd visited them a second time. Felix threw in a few invented incidents -- there'd been a thunderstorm at Heligan, and she'd lost her purse in the Eden Project but got it back again.

She had been dozing on the sofa in the living room. Felix took her a cup of tea and woke her up, and the spell worked even
better
than a dream. When they'd finished, Betony said she ought to be on her way, and Felix's father suggested his

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wife start unpacking Felix's dirty clothes so that Betony could make her departure on the carpet unobserved.

Betony changed back into her old tunic and pants, and she and Felix went into the garden.

"So when's Christmas?" asked Betony, fingering her pendant. She hadn't taken it off from the moment Felix had given it to her.

"Four months' time," said Felix, smiling.

"Does that mean I get to come back as well?" asked Nimby, wriggling with excitement.

"I don't know how else I could manage it," said Betony. She gave Felix a hug and climbed aboard. Then the carpet took off, and before long it was a little speck in the sky.

Felix smiled and went back inside. He realized that his mother had started unpacking his backpack and stopped halfway through. She was now downstairs in the living room; he'd passed the door and seen her putting some brass ornament or other on the mantelpiece. He carried on with the job, and at the bottom he found the small wooden statue of Leona that he'd bought in Kaflabad. For a moment he was devastated; he'd managed to bring yet another half-twisted potential hazard with him. Then he remembered that there was nothing magical about the statue; it had been carved in the usual way, from a piece of wood. It was just a harmless memento of his rather unusual summer vacation.