Jinx On The Divide (34 page)

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though, coming back to life and finding me gone. Missing me by a whisker. Although Tansy was always the favorite." She wiped a strand of wet blond hair out of her eyes. "If I can't go back, I'll have to find somewhere to live, and get a job."

"That's where this world does have some advantages," said Felix, thinking,
At
last
there's something positive I can offer her.

A motorcycle roared out of nowhere, making both of them jump, and disappeared just as rapidly. Betony looked shaken; the noise had been very sudden and very loud.

"I'm sure you'll be able to live at my house," Felix went on. "It's huge. The reason my parents never had more children was because they might have been born with the same heart condition I had. But my mom would love a daughter, I know she would."

Betony stiffened slightly. "I don't want someone bossing me around. I haven't had that for four and a half years."

Felix glossed over it. There were some things that really weren't worth going into just yet. "You wouldn't have to get a job, though. To begin with, you'd go to school. Then you'd choose your favorite subject ..."

"History."

"... and you'd go to college and study just that. And then, maybe, you'd work in a museum, or go on expeditions to dig things up."

Betony looked impressed. "I'd have to help your mom gather toadstools, though, and stuff like that."

Felix laughed. There were a lot of problems ahead, he

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could see that, but maybe ... just maybe ... things would be OK. "I'd better make that phone call," he said.

Felix's father shouted for quite a long time. Then he calmed down, told them to find a hotel, have some dinner, and wait for him there. Some hours later, he arrived in his car, paid the bill, and put Nimby in the trunk. He'd met the carpet before, the previous summer. He went tight-lipped when he realized what had happened. Felix wanted to hug him for caring, but things were still a bit tense. Then he drove them back to Wimbledon, and on the way, Felix told him everything that had happened and that there was no way back to Betony's world ever again.

"Well, I can't say I'm sorry, Felix," said his father. "I just got back from Edinburgh, but when your mother told me you were at a sleepover, and she wasn't the least bit worried that you hadn't come back ... Well, I just knew."

"Can Betony stay with us?"

"Yes. Although how we're going to manage the paperwork, I'm not quite sure. I'll think of something. But no more illusion spells on Felix's mother, Betony, all right?"

"I don't think they'll work anymore, Mr. Sanders," said Betony. "The two worlds have been severed for good. I'll have to make do with science from now on."

"You must be very upset about being separated from your parents."

"I think I'm more upset for
them,
if you know what I mean. They got turned to stone four and a half years ago, but

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it'll seem like yesterday to them. It seems like ages ago to
me.
I've gotten used to not having them around, but they're not used to me not being there."

When they got back, Felix's mom was delighted to see them. She asked them if they'd had a good time, made them some hot chocolate, and heated up some mince pies. Then she sent them off to bed.

The following morning, Felix bumped his head on something when he woke up. He turned to look. It was a Christmas stocking. Once again, he'd forgotten what day it was, despite the previous night's festive snack -- it just didn't seem important. He jumped out of bed, seized the stocking, ran into Betony's room, and woke her up. She, too, had a stocking.

Opening them was hilarious. Felix's mom had always filled a stocking with small presents -- something to keep him busy when he was small, when he woke up at the crack of dawn; something to keep him quiet before he went downstairs to open the gifts from relatives. She had filled Betony's stocking with all the things she'd have expected a fourteen-year-old girl to want -- makeup and hair clips and pretty stationery. Felix had to explain what everything was -- and he didn't know what some of them were himself! Girl stuff. Weird.

"Chocolate brazzles?" said Betony, holding up a box she'd just opened. "They're the wrong shape."

"Brazils," corrected Felix, laughing. "They're nuts."

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"Oh," said Betony, popping one in her mouth. "What's this?" She pulled the cap off a sparkly gold pen. "Eye paint?"

Felix laughed again. "It's a pen," he said.

"Find me some paper," said Betony. "I want to give it a try."

Felix went back to his room, and the first thing his eye fell on was his notebook. He grabbed it, and then he remembered Thornbeak's cataloguing pen, which he would now never be able to return to her. He felt a wave of sadness. She would miss Betony more than Betony's parents would, in all likelihood. Betony had been a really good history apprentice; Fuzzy was more interested in travel. And what about all the other friends he would never see again? Ironclaw, Grimspite ... even Rhino. Better not to dwell on it. He took the notebook back to Betony and opened it for her to write in.

"What's all this?" said Betony. "It's not your writing. Your writing's nearly as bad as mine."

Felix peered at it. The writing had been executed in an immaculate copperplate script. "I think the brazzle quill wrote this," he said. "All on its own. Remember the book titles it gave us in the brandee's study? It's in that same purple ink, too."

Betony popped another chocolate Brazil into her mouth. "What does it say?" she asked, her cheek bulging.

Felix read a couple of paragraphs, and stiffened. "I'll begin at the beginning," he said, flicking back. "I think it's pretty important."

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I, Dewfeather, quills of quills, cannot deny my nature. My nature is to write, and write I must. My quest is to create order from chaos, wherever I find it. At the moment, I am incarcerated in a backpack with a jinx box that is as crazy as a cactus. However, I do have a notebook at my disposal, and writing may well pressure my sanity.

Betony laughed. Felix smiled, and continued.

Most of the words stored in the box have already been arranged in already been arranged in alphabetical order and reproduced in Quillfinger's dictionary. However, some of them were too dangerous for general consumption, thus have never seen the light of the day. I have no idea how long it shall remain in the present location, so I shall amuse myself by defining each of the powerwords, and I shall place a spell over them so that only a brazzle may read them. In my experience, only brazzles have the integrity to be in charge of information such as this.

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"Sounds just as pompous as Ironclaw," said Betony affectionately. "It was his feather, after all."

There was a moment of silence as both of them had their own thoughts, which was broken by the sound of movement downstairs. Felix's mother was doing things in the kitchen. The smell of baking bread drifted up the stairs.

"Hang on," said Felix. "How come we can read this, if it's only meant for brazzles?"

"The spell won't complete, will it?" said Betony. "Magic doesn't work over here anymore."

"Oh, right," said Felix, moving on hastily.

There was a sudden aroma of sage and onion stuffing, and Felix felt the first rumblings of hunger. But breakfast could wait. This was more important. "The quill has put the words in alphabetical order. So we'll start with
abracadabra."
He smiled. He could say it with impunity.
Abracadabra
had no effect over here.

The word abracadabra was originally written on a piece of parchment in a triangular formation, and hung around the neck of someone with a fever or a toothache or the ague in order to cure it -- like an amulet. It looked like this.

Felix held up his notebook so that Betony could see.

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ABRACADABRA

ABRACADABR

ABRACADAB

ABRACADA

ABRACAD

ABRACA

ABRAC

ABRA

ABR

AB

A

"Like all powerwords,"
he continued,
"it came from another dimension. Over there, it was a Cabalistic charm, and its aim was to unite the finite and the infinite."

"That makes sense," said Betony. "The brandee became finite when he turned into a nomad -- he can now eat and sleep and all those things, but he will also die, just like anyone else. Before, he could only be killed by accident."

When spoken by the appropriate agent, this powerword will release a brandee from bondage, and render his lamp inert. This brandee will attain free will.

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Free will, of course, is merely an illusion, for a creature's behavior is governed by its determination to survive. Other magical conditions may also be affected. If a scientific object is present when abracadabra is declaimed, however, the effects are much greater.

"And that's it for that entry."

"How about
hocus pocus?"
said Betony.

The sage-and-onion smell was superseded by one of coffee and freshly squeezed oranges.

"Breakfast, you two!" called Felix's mother.

"We'll come back to it after we've eaten," said Felix, and they went downstairs.

Breakfast was his mother's wonderful walnut bread -- with butter, smoked ham, and honey or marmalade. There was fruit juice and coffee to drink, and it was Betony's first experience of coffee. She didn't like it, but she struggled through it because it would have looked a little odd to confess she'd never tried it before. After breakfast, there were the big presents to open.

They went into the living room. A stately Christmas tree stood in the corner, scenting the room with pine. It was festooned with sparkling little string lights and silver tinsel. Paper decorations hung from the ceiling, and more lights winked from the walls. Betony gaped in amazement.

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Once again, Felix's mother had made a real effort to include Betony in the celebration, and she'd bought her some very fashionable and rather expensive clothes. Betony had never worn anything but green -- except for a brief episode in Felix's world last summer -- and she held the clothes up against herself and looked in the mirror. Then she went and put them on.

"I know what she likes," said Felix's mother, with a smile. "She borrowed some of my clothes last summer, didn't she, after she got caught in a downpour?"

Felix tried to disguise his disappointment when Betony returned. She'd tied back her hair to reveal her rounded ears, and apart from her eyes -- just a little too slanted and a little too green -- she looked just like anyone else from school. A lot prettier, admittedly, but no longer an elf. He gave her the present he'd bought for her a couple of weeks before. A history of the world, in lots and lots of chapters.

"That's just so smooth," said Betony, flicking through it. "I'm really going to enjoy that."

By the time Felix had opened all his own presents -- he had lots of uncles and aunts and cousins, as well as the full complement of grandparents -- it was time to feast. Betony's face lit up when she saw the meal, and she tried everything, from turkey to gravy to sprouts with chestnuts. The Christmas pudding, with its crown of flames, was the biggest hit of all. After that, it was slumping in front of the television. Although Felix had seen
Jurassic Park
several times before, it was all new to Betony and he had to keep explaining things. She was more

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impressed with the helicopter than the dinosaurs. The dinosaurs simply reminded her of fire-breathers.

It was late in the afternoon before they were able to get back to Felix's notebook.

"Hocus pocus is an otherworld conjurer's command, "
read Felix,
used to bring out some sort of change."

"That makes sense, too," said Betony. "From stone back to flesh. What's a conjurer?"

"A pretend magician," said Felix.

"Do
open sesame
now."

Open sesame was the command used to open the robbers' den in "Ali Baba and the forty thieves," from the tales of the Arabian Nights.

"So once upon a time it really worked?"

Felix smiled. "I'm afraid not.
Arabian Nights
is a book."

"Oh, well. Go on."

Open sesame is a negative powerword -- it unlocks that which was locked. However, mathematical spells such as the Divide spell have a negative result and two negatives make a positive. A positive will work

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in the opposite way and close the divide for good. When a scientific object is present w hen open sesame is declaimed, however, and something attempts to cross the Divide before it closes completely, the result is catastrophic. When the tug on the organism reaches the point at which it can stand it no longer -- the moment when the indivisible self usually escapes into another dimension -- the escape route is no longer there. Therefore, the self will do the seemingly impossible and actually divide.

"What does
that
mean?" asked Betony.

"Dunno," said Felix. "I'll keep reading, OK?" Betony nodded.

As self is only an illusion, anyway - a convenient method of transporting half-twists...

"What's a half-twist?" asked Betony.

"Ironclaw explained it to me once," said Felix. "It's like DNA in my world -- the part of you that carries the you, in every tiny building block of your body."