‘Here,’ said Longfellow. ‘Somewhere around here, perhaps . . .’
He mumbled something in what Effie was sure was Rosian. And then something she didn’t understand at all. He turned around once, twice, three times, and touched the air in different places.
Then something began appearing slowly. It was an old-fashioned post office made of yellow brick. It had a thatched roof covered with pink flowers. Other pretty plants were growing all over its front. It fitted right into this street. It had a red sign that said POST OFFICE just above the door, and a postbox as part of its front wall. However, a large sign on the door said CLOSED.
Pelham Longfellow opened the door, which made a tinkle-tinkle sound, and Effie followed him in. The post office smelled dusty and old, although everything in it looked very clean and polished. The smell was a blend of paper, pencil shavings, the inside of cats’ ears, white erasers, string and envelope glue. There was also a faint whiff of dunce’s hats, which, as we already know, smell like mould and dead mice. Essentially, the place smelled a lot like the Tusitala School for the Gifted, Troubled and Strange.
‘We’re closed!’ said a grumpy man from behind the wooden counter. ‘I don’t know what business you have summoning us when we are closed. It’s an abomination, I tell you. I’ll be writing to the village council and the Guild of Craftspeople in triplicate and . . .’
‘Greetings and blessings,’ said Longfellow.
‘Greetings and blessings to you,’ said the man. ‘Although I repeat that we are closed. Fermé. Shoot. Closen. How many languages do you want? I was just settling down to my cocoa and my newspaper. Do you know what time it is? Curses on you. Oh, and blessings, too, of course. Double blessings and another curse. Oh, blast it.’
‘She has come for her papers and her mark,’ said Longfellow.
‘Papers and mark?’ said the man, wide-eyed. ‘Well, why didn’t you say? That’s different. At least that’s interesting. Worth being summoned for. But . . .’ He looked at Effie long and hard. ‘Young, isn’t she?’
‘She’s of age,’ said Longfellow. ‘Can you do it here? Or do I need a bigger post office? I can take her to a more significant town, I suppose, maybe Froghole or Old Wives’ End, but I didn’t want to go through the forest and across the plains in the dark. But of course if the complex paperwork is beyond you . . .’
The man sighed and then produced another strange combination of curses and blessings. Then he frowned and, still cursing and blessing, started pulling out pieces of paper and forms from different cubbyholes behind his counter.
‘This one for the passport and that one for the portal tax and another one for the vaccinations and one in case she is, in fact, underage . . . and then the requisitions slip for the ink for the mark and one for the stencil and . . .’
Pelham Longfellow took the great pile of paper that the man produced and went off to sit at a little desk to fill it all in.
‘You stay here and get the mark,’ Longfellow said to Effie. ‘It doesn’t take long.’
‘Does it hurt?’ she asked, but Longfellow didn’t answer.
‘Sleeve,’ said the post office clerk. ‘Quickly, before we shut. Did I mention that we are supposed to be CLOSED?’
‘Yes, and I’m so sorry for troubling you,’ said Effie.
‘A polite child,’ he said. ‘Well, that’s something. Which reminds me. Are you of age?’
‘Yes,’ said Effie, not having any idea what this meant.
‘Good. SLEEVE.’
‘Oh, sorry.’ Effie rolled up her right sleeve.
‘Bring it closer, bring it closer. Aha,’ said the clerk. ‘Good.’
He mumbled away to himself as he first dabbed the area with a cotton wool ball with some sort of cold liquid on it. Effie wondered if this was going to be like getting a tattoo. Cait had a tattoo on her shoulder, but she had sworn she’d never get another one because it hurt so much. Effie bit her lip. Surely they’d use magic in a place like this, though, not . . .
‘Ow!’ she said, as a needle punctured her skin.
‘That’s your vaccinations. Not so bad, eh? Right . . .’
‘Ow!’ There was another needle now, but this one scratched rather than pierced. Effie wanted to cry out, but bit her lip again instead. She knew that this would be the mark that would enable her to travel freely between the worlds. It would make her a real traveller, like her grandfather must have been. She almost cried out several more times, but soon it was all over. When she looked down, she had a perfect letter M on her arm in a sort of faintly glowing, milky silver colour. It was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘And, er, blessings.’
‘A nice polite child, at least. Well, you’re welcome,’ said the clerk. ‘Now . . .’ He coughed once, and then twice until Pelham Longfellow looked up. ‘Did I mention that we are CLOSED?’
‘Hold your horses,’ said Longfellow. ‘I’m almost there. I had no idea there were so many forms to fill in now. Last time I did this there was only one.’
‘When the Guild puts its mind to something . . .’ began the clerk. ‘But there’s no time for chit chat. Come on, quickly, quickly.’
Pelham hurriedly filled in the last of the papers and then brought them over for Effie to sign. While Effie signed them all, the post office clerk drummed his fingers dramatically on the desk in front of him. Then Pelham handed over the papers and the clerk stamped them without even looking at them, before laboriously filing each carbon copy in a different cubbyhole. Then he got out a small brown leather wallet and placed a folded-over piece of green paper inside it.
‘That’s your passport,’ he said to Effie. ‘And this,’ he said, giving her a small laminated gold card, ‘is your M-card for the other side.’
‘Thank you,’ said Effie.
‘Well, you’ve no need to hang around,’ he said. ‘Especially as we are CLOSED.’
‘Wait,’ said Pelham Longfellow. ‘Do you have something to put all this in? She doesn’t have a bag with her.’
The clerk tut-tutted and moved slowly over to a cupboard which he opened to reveal a great stash of small velvet draw-string bags, leather satchels, briefcases and pouches. There was a soft brown bag with a brass clasp that looked like it would go crossways across Effie’s body, leaving her hands free for other things. It looked sort of old and comfortable, like all her favourite things.
‘Can I have that one?’ she asked.
The clerk sighed and grunted and dropped a lot of other things getting the bag, but then it was Effie’s. It felt as if it had belonged to her for ever.
‘GOODBYE,’ said the clerk pointedly, after Effie had stashed all her things in the bag. She noticed that no money was exchanged, but thought it best to say nothing.
The door tinkle-tinkled again as they left, and then the whole post office disappeared.
‘Where did it come from?’ Effie asked Longfellow. ‘The post office, I mean.’
‘From your world,’ he replied. ‘Well, sort of. It’s a liminal place. You’ve been to the bun shop, I think.’
‘Yes, Mrs Bottle’s Bun Shop.’
‘Well, that’s a liminal place that you can go through. A portal. Not that I recommend using portals, as I mentioned before. But now you have the mark and your papers you can travel wherever you like, of course.’
‘And did we pay him with M-currency?’
‘Hmm?’ Longfellow seemed suddenly distracted.
‘How did we pay? In Mrs Bottle’s Bun Shop I paid for my bun with M-currency, although I didn’t understand what it was at the time.’
‘Oh no, no one pays for anything here,’ said Longfellow. ‘On the mainland you get lifeforce by giving things to other people, so everything is free. Now hang on, you’ll need to concentrate for a minute.’
They were approaching a patch of dense forest.
‘Before we go in,’ said Longfellow, ‘I must give you this.’ He reached into his briefcase and drew out a small double-edged
dagger with a bone handle.
‘This is an athame.’ He pronounced this ath-ah-may. ‘It is not your true weapon, but you may borrow it until you get yours. As a true hero you can use most slicing weapons, and it’s the best I can do. There are creatures in the forest and on the plains beyond. The roots from some of the trees go as deep as the Underworld, which means that dark things can come out. It’s not far to the portal, but we must take care.’
‘Thanks,’ said Effie, taking the athame. She had never held any sort of weapon before. It felt strange and heavy in her hands.
The forest was dark and dense, but the path through it was wide. As they went on, Effie began to feel properly frightened for the first time in her adventure so far. She remembered what Cosmo had said about what happens when you die in the Otherworld. If she died here, would she die truly, or would she have to be born again as a baby in the Realworld? Either way, she would forget all about her adventures, and her cousins and Cosmo, and the fact that her grandfather was out there somewhere on the plains – wherever that was. Would her death be painful? Probably. And what if there were creatures waiting to take her underground, to imprison her and . . .
Just as Effie thought that, something dark and scaly jumped up in front of her. It had thin, wiry arms and legs and very sharp-looking claws. It had indeed come from some sort of dark burrow underground. It hissed and shone its flame-red eyes at her and then flew into a tree. Then another came out, and one more.
‘Oh no,’ said Longfellow. ‘Demons.’
‘Demons?’
‘They can’t hurt you,’ said Longfellow, ‘as long as you don’t engage with them. You need to kill them as soon as they come near you and keep on walking.’
Effie found she was shaking.
‘But I’ve never killed anything before,’ she said.
‘If it helps at all, they’re not real. Well, they are real, but they are not living beings in their own right. They’re . . .’
Just then another dark, scaly creature leapt out and started darting around Pelham Longfellow. Longfellow reached for his weapon – a small silver pistol of the sort you’d find in a black and white film from the 1930s. He started trying to shoot the creature, but it simply dematerialised and then popped up somewhere else. It was hissing at him. The words weren’t completely clear to Effie but she could pick up something about Clothilde and then the words, ‘She doesn’t love you; she never loved you.’ Then another demon jumped out and started laughing at Longfellow’s hair. Another one kept repeating the words, ‘You killed your own father.’
Longfellow managed to hit one of them, but the others kept moving out of range. But suddenly Effie was more concerned about her own demons. Three of them popped up in front of her and all at once they seemed to be taunting her with the most painful things from her life. ‘Come underground with me,’ said one of them. ‘Go on. You can live there for ever and cry about your grandfather and the fact that no one on earth loves you now he’s gone. You may as well give in.’
‘You have no true friends,’ said another one.
‘Everyone hates you,’ said a third.
Longfellow hit another of his demons with a little pop of antique bullets. And then another. Now there was just one more for him to kill, and then perhaps he’d be able to help Effie. But his last demon was evading his bullets very easily.
Effie held the athame out in front of her. Longfellow had said not to engage with the demons, to just kill them, but they were actually making her quite angry, and when Effie was angry she always argued.
She looked at the first one. ‘Why would I want to go anywhere with you?’ she asked it. ‘It’s not logical. I’m not going to cry over my grandfather; I’m going to find him. And even if I don’t find him, I am going to live out the destiny he planned for me. I will never, ever give in. And as for you,’ she said to the second demon, ‘you don’t know anything. I do have true friends. I have Maximilian, and Lexy, and so you can say what you like, it won’t make it real. And you?’ she said to the third demon, ‘I have never heard such utter rubbish in my entire life. If you’re trying to upset me you’ll have to try harder than that. You’re ridiculous. Pathetic. And what’s more, I think you have no power apart from these words. And as we all know, words cannot hurt anyone. You are powerless and insignificant.’
One by one, the demons disappeared.
‘Bravo,’ said Pelham Longfellow. ‘Who taught you to do that?’
‘To do what?’
He laughed, but quite admiringly. ‘You’re, what, eleven? You just faced your demons,’ he said. ‘I see what Griffin meant about you.’
But Effie didn’t get a chance to ask him exactly what he meant, because suddenly they had reached the end of the forest and the beginning of the plains, and Longfellow was putting a finger to his lips.
‘Shhh,’ he said. ‘We need to listen for beasts.’
‘Beasts?’
He nodded. ‘And these are real, not dark parts of you like the demons were. They will eat you if you try to argue with them. As long as it’s quiet, we can run for it. The portal here comes out just by your school, I believe. It’s the one Griffin used to use. I usually take the one on the other side of the village, which comes up in London, but I’ll come with you today. But we’ll split up as soon as we come out. I am mainly in London or Paris, but you can always get me with this.’ He gave Effie a business card. Instead of a pager number it had three words on it. Barre, Attempren, Fairnesse. ‘If you say those words, I will come to you as soon as I can. It does use up magic but I imagine that after facing your demons and completing the book you’ll be pretty strong on lifeforce anyway.’
‘Thank you,’ said Effie.
‘And don’t forget that when you come out you must go straight home and destroy the book.’
Effie nodded. ‘I know.’
Longfellow squeezed her hand. ‘Ready?’
‘Yes.’
‘You see that weeping willow? After three, we’re going to run for it. The beasts can’t see you if you run fast enough. The portal is hidden by the tree’s canopy. Just copy what I do and step through the curtain of leaves. One, two . . .’
29
Odile Underwood had tried very hard to keep magic from her son. For a start, she had called him Maximilian, which she had felt to be quite an unmagical name. She had also made sure they lived in the least magical place imaginable. A bungalow by the sea (but with no sea view). What could be less magical than that? Maybe a semi-detached on a new housing estate, but the bungalow had at least been cheap. Odile’s sister Idony, an Adept druid healer, had not taken this approach, and look what had happened to her. She lived in an eco-treehouse in a sacred grove in the West Country. Her children were always muddy, sometimes ate worms, did not fit in at school, got bad grades, and social workers were always coming round and trying to re-house them.
Odile had not wanted that for her family, such as it was. And of course she had to keep the more interesting parts of her work at the hospital a secret. Kate, her daughter, was a success: blissfully unaware of magic, M-currency, liminals and the Otherworld. Kate’s father – Odile’s ex-husband – had nothing magical about him at all, which helped. Kate had grown up in the normal way and become an accountant in the New Town. She had a nice husband and baby and went on three holidays a year. She visited Odile sometimes on a Sunday afternoon and talked about her next holiday, or her last holiday, or what school her baby might go to when it grew up.
If only Odile Underwood hadn’t fallen in love with that dark Master mage who had visited the hospital during that stormy spring twelve years ago. If only Maximilian hadn’t had such magical genes. If only those genes weren’t so . . . Weren’t so . . . She didn’t like to think about how her son’s genes might turn out, given that her own family’s genes had produced quite a lot of neutrals and the mage hadn’t exactly been good. He had been fun, in a brutal kind of way, but not good. He had left her, of course, and run – or flown – back to whatever far edge of th
e Otherworld he had come from. He didn’t even know about his son. But Odile’s husband did. Once he knew she was pregnant, it hadn’t taken long for him to put two and two together.
After the divorce, she bought the bungalow and prayed that Maximilian would keep out of trouble and grow up as ordinary as his sister. She bought him a computer and hoped that he would simply turn into the kind of normal nerdy boy who got good grades and liked playing old-fashioned videogames and looking at pictures of girls he would never, ever be able to meet. She thought he might make a good dentist one day.
But then she had allowed him to sit the entrance exam for the Tusitala School for the Gifted, Troubled and Strange, and that was where it had probably all gone wrong. Now Maximilian was friends with Griffin Truelove’s granddaughter, who was bound to have awakened her powers after receiving the Ring of the True Hero that morning. The boy that had come earlier, Wolf, had obviously just epiphanised, too. Odile had liked him, had felt the goodness in him immediately.
But now Maximilian and his new friend had disappeared.
Odile wasn’t stupid. She had sensed, from the minute Wolf had turned up, that her son was about to embark on his first magical adventure. Her efforts to stop him had failed. Well, that was life, she supposed. Now she would just have to try to help as best she could.
Like others in the Realworld, Odile gathered her M-currency slowly and diligently. A little prayer here, a candle there. It all added up. And she had enough that when she now opened her old magical box and pulled out her dusty crystal ball she was almost able, after rinsing the crystal ball in the pond in the garden (they did not have a clear spring, nor was there any moonlight), and then under the tap to get all the murky green bits off, to see where her son had gone.
He was in trouble, she could see that. She could hear it, too. There were several piercing screams and one word: ‘spiders’. Maximilian hated spiders. She had to save him. But where, exactly, was he? The crystal ball showed dark rooms and cobblestones. Maybe the Old Town . . .