Andrew could think of nothing to say but, “Well, we live and learn. Are you sure?”
“So tell,” the creature repeated, leaning forward again. The pressure seemed to squeeze at Andrew’s skull.
“We can’t!” the Chinese boy shrilled from behind Andrew. “Aidan didn’t say. He said if he didn’t tell us, we couldn’t tell.”
“So go away and stop frightening us!” shouted one of the girls.
“Yes, do go,” Andrew said. He could feel the children shaking. It made him angry. What business had this creature to try to terrorise three children who had only happened to be where Aidan was? In a powerful surge of rage, he waved his glasses towards it and thundered out, “Go away! Get gone!” A look of astonishment came over the creature’s narrow face. Andrew was irresistibly reminded of Mr Stock, the time Andrew had told him to mulch the roses. It made him realise that he was in the right here too. “I mean it!” he yelled. “GO!”
To his surprise, the creature went. It seemed to compress into itself from both silvery misted sides, so that it became a gold and silver streak that squeezed away into empty air. The pressure to speak, and the feeling of being watched that had hung heavily in the street all along, went too, quite suddenly.
“And don’t come back!” Andrew added to the empty pavement.
“That was good, Mister!” the boy said admiringly.
One of the girls said, “I knew he was good.”
The other said, “Let’s get back in, or they’ll notice.”
The three of them went racing away, back to the space war.
Andrew walked on, to what proved to be a dreadful journey home: almost no taxis, trains delayed, trains cancelled and the train that Andrew did eventually catch breaking down three stations away from Melton. It was almost as if that creature had ill-wished him. Yet Andrew hardly noticed. He spent the entire journey thinking, I don’t believe this! I do not believe this!
The trouble was, he did believe it. He felt he could hardly blame the Arkwrights for inventing their own version of things.
Chapter Eleven
When Aidan came yawning down to the kitchen that morning, with Rolf eagerly following, he found Andrew’s note on the table. It never occurred to him that Andrew’s journey to London had anything to do with him. He wondered whether to leave the note for Mrs Stock. He knew it was the kind of thing that would make Mrs Stock say, “World of his own!” and start making cauliflower cheese, but he thought she ought to know where Andrew had gone. So he decided to leave it, but make sure he was not in the house when she found it. Meanwhile, he was rather glad that Andrew was not here to see how much cereal he and Rolf were eating between them.
Then, as Mrs Stock had still not arrived, Aidan took his glasses off and examined the old, old coloured glass in the kitchen door. This was something he had been itching to do, but not in front of Mrs Stock or even Andrew. It struck him as very ancient and secret.
At first, all he could tell was that the glass was quite powerfully magic. He had a feeling that you could use it for something, either pane by pane, or in various combinations — red with blue, blue with green, and so on — or you could use all the colours together, rather powerfully. But he still had not the least idea what you might use it for.
Rolf, seeing Aidan so interested, put his paws on the lower half of the door and reared up to look at the glass too. Aidan could see Rolf’s reflection, dimly, in the yellow pane in the middle at the bottom. The glass was so old and foggy that things reflected in it only faintly, as if you were not really seeing them at all.
“Have you any idea what this window does?” Aidan asked Rolf.
Rolf’s paws slipped. He landed on the floor with a grunt and had to scrabble his way up the wooden half of the door to look at the panes again. This time he landed in front of the blue glass on the left. He whined gently.
Aidan thought at first that this was simply doggish clumsiness. Then he realised that he could still see Rolf’s reflection, faint but clear, with its ears pricked, in the yellow glass. The beautiful hyacinth blue that Rolf was now staring into contained a different face.
“Clever!” Aidan said. Rolf’s tail whirled so hard that he unbalanced himself and slid down to the floor again. Rolf was making serious scratches down the door, Aidan saw rather guiltily, as he bent down to look in the blue glass. The face in it, smoky and far away, seemed to be Shaun’s. Unless it was Groil’s. It could have been either of them.
Odd, Aidan thought, and crouched along to look into the red pane, lower right. The shape in this one, like someone silhouetted against a fierce sunset, had a battered hat on. Aidan knew the shape of that hat so well by now that he sprang up and opened the door, like Andrew always did, before Mr Stock could barge it open.
And, sure enough, Mr Stock loomed in the doorway, carrying a box.
Rolf gave a deep bark of pleasure and galloped outside past Mr Stock, where he raised his leg against the water butt and then trotted busily about, sniffing and occasionally raising his leg again to squirt on clumps of weeds.
Mr Stock came in and dumped his box beside Aidan’s cereal bowl. It contained a heap of foot-long broad beans with lumps all the way along them, like snakes that had swallowed several nests of mice. Groil’s going to be happy tonight! Aidan thought. He did not care for broad beans and he very much hoped Andrew didn’t like them either.
“Where’s the professor?” Mr Stock asked. “His car’s not here.”
“Gone to London,” Aidan said. “He left a note.”
“It’s to be hoped he knows what he’s doing then,” Mr Stock said, and departed.
Aidan closed the door carefully behind him and then stood on tiptoe to peer into the top three panes. The orange glass, top left, had waves in it that made it hard to see that there just could be a face in it too. But a face was there, like someone dissolving in fruit juice. Aidan could pick out the hairstyle, the slightly bulging eyes and the thin, sucked-in cheeks. It really did look like Mrs Stock. He opened the door again, in case Mrs Stock was outside now, but the only person who came in was Rolf, all sprightly from his run round the garden.
“So it doesn’t work to summon people,” Aidan said. “How does it work then?” He turned his attention to the green pane, top right.
There was no mistake here. It was Stashe. She smiled merrily at Aidan out of a fog of spring green, almost as if she was about to speak, make a joke, tell Aidan he had to help her with the papers today, or else. There was a line of green bubbles across her, like spring sunshine.
“And she doesn’t come today,” Aidan remembered. “So it’s not summoning.”
He went on to the purple pane, in the middle. He expected, if he saw anyone, to see Andrew there. The purple pane had struck him all along as the important one. Instead he looked into a space full of lilac twilight, not a peaceful space. There was a storm, or a high wind, in there, tossing trees against rushing clouds and occasional small zigzags of lightning. Among the glittering and shifting purples and greys, Aidan thought he could pick out a face. But he could not see it clearly enough to say whose it was.
While he was trying to see it more clearly, Aidan was almost knocked backwards by Mrs Stock coming in, followed by Shaun. He put his glasses back on quickly and the windowpanes were empty again, nothing but glowing colours and accidental streaks, lumps and bubbles.
In the time it took Aidan to hook his glasses behind his ears, Mrs Stock had read Andrew’s note, snorted out, “Men!”, sent Shaun off to work and looked disgustedly at the broad beans. “What does that man expect me to do with these?” she said. “They’ll be like wood wrapped in leather. Can’t he ever bear to pick veg when they’re tender?” She picked up the empty cereal packet and shook it. Then it was Aidan’s turn. “Look at this! You and that great greedy dog have eaten the lot between you! Go and get some more, this instant. And get some dog food while you’re at it. The shop sells that too.”
Before Aidan had collected his wits enough to turn from magical thoug
hts to everyday ones, he and Rolf were outside with a large pink shopping bag.
“Well, it’ll make a walk for you,” Aidan told Rolf. The two of them set off up the village.
The shop, labelled simply THE SHOP, PROPRIETOR R. STOCK was beyond the church and next door to TRIXIE HAIR STYLIST. Rosie Stock, who kept the shop, looked at Aidan with gossipy interest. She plainly knew just who he was. “Is that dog yours?” she said. “Make him sit outside. He’s not hygienic. I thought he was a stray really. I’ve seen him around for years. I’ve only got chocolate cereal left today, or would you like the set of little packets? And does the dog eat the dry food or the meat in tins?”
Aidan chose both kinds of both. As Rosie packed them all into the pink bag for him, it dawned on him that he had no money to pay for them. Rosie Stock seemed the firm kind of lady who would never let a person promise to pay later. Aidan doubted if she would agree to let Andrew pay later. There was only one thing to do in that case. A bit nervously, he fetched out the old battered wallet, took his glasses off and opened it.
For a moment, it seemed to Aidan that someone in the distance said, “Ah!” But this was mixed up with the fizz of magic from the wallet and Aidan’s own delight when he looked inside it and found a twenty pound note. There was so much change left when he had paid for the cereals and the dog food that Aidan bought Rolf a gluey-looking pretend bone and a chocolate coconut bar for himself. He still jingled with coins when he came out of the shop.
Using the wallet had made him miserable. It brought back the time Gran had given it to him — with the sarcastic look she always had when she talked of Aidan’s father — and the way Gran had not looked at all well that day. Gran must have known she was going to die, but Aidan hadn’t even properly noticed she was unwell. And Gran must have had some kind of strong protection around him that Aidan had never noticed either, because the moment she died, the Stalkers had crowded into the yard.
Aidan didn’t want to think of these things. To take his mind off them, he walked on up the village with Rolf, until he came to the football ground, hoping that someone was playing football there.
They were. All his new friends were there. They were having to play on a shorter pitch than before because the near end of the field now had two large dusty vans in it, labelled in curly letters, Rowan’s Travelling Fair. “They always come for the Fete,” Gloria Appleby explained. “There’ll be more of them coming next week. Glad to see you again. We lost yesterday.”
Everyone was glad to see Aidan. Some of them said, “Where were you yesterday?” And others said, just like Rosie Stock in the shop, “Is that dog yours? I thought he was a stray.”
Rolf shortly became a problem. Aidan sat Rolf down near the goal, beside the pink bag, and told him to look after it. But the moment the game got going, Rolf dashed off to join in. Aidan laughed at first. The sight of Rolf, ears flying, tail whirling, trying to tackle Gloria or, barking excitedly, dribbling the ball with his nose and front feet, was truly silly. And it got sillier when Rolf dribbled the ball to the end of the field and got stuck in the hedge.
No one else was pleased. “He’s spoiling the game!” they objected.
Aidan hauled Rolf and the football out of the hedge and made him sit by the pink bag again. “Sit there,” he said, “or I’ll turn you out to be a stray again!”
This sobered Rolf for a while. He sat obediently beside the pink bag. But soon, whenever the ball came near, Aidan could see Rolf half rise to his feet with his ears pricked, yearning to join in. Aidan expected him to turn into his boy form in his excitement, but that never happened. Perhaps Rolf knew that this would cause even more trouble. Just to be on the safe side, Aidan tapped him on the nose and warned him to be good. Rolf sat and whined.
When Aidan next looked, Rolf was not there. There was only the pink bag.
“Where did he go?” Aidan asked the others. “Did anyone see?”
Before anyone could reply, the answer came in huge yelps and snarls from behind the Travelling Fair vans. Aidan dashed over there to find Rolf in the most vigorous fight with the Fair’s guard dog. Both dogs seemed to be enjoying it wonderfully, but the woman who rushed out of one of the vans was not pleased at all. Aidan helped her haul the dogs apart, after which she handed him a piece of rope.
“Tie it up,” she said, and stalked back into her van.
So Aidan dragged Rolf over to the gate and tied him to a gatepost. Rolf was laughing, dog fashion, with his tongue hanging out, and quite unrepentant. “Yes, I know you were winning,” Aidan said to him, “but that’s because you’re not really a dog. You were being unfair. You’re cleverer that it is. Now behave!” He gave Rolf the gluey fake bone to keep him quiet.
Rolf ate the bone in two minutes, but he gave no more trouble. There was peaceful football until Jimmy Stock looked at his watch and said he had to be getting home for lunch. Everyone else looked at watches then and said the same. Aidan untied Rolf and gave Gloria the rope to give back to the woman, and they all left, some up the road to the new houses and some the same way that Aidan was going. Rolf trotted demurely in the middle of the cheerful group like a dog that had never misbehaved in its life.
As he and Rolf turned into the lane leading to Melstone House, Aidan had a horrible thought. Suppose, because Andrew was away, that Mrs Stock did not think she had to get lunch, not even cauliflower cheese? Aidan was so hungry by then that he could have eaten those broad beans raw. Well — almost. He went round the house to the back door to give Mrs Stock her pink bag back and then, perhaps, to look pleading the way Rolf did.
Rolf dashed ahead, round the corner. Aidan heard him give a roaring sort of bark there, full of surprise. Aidan ran after him, lugging the bag. Groil was there, looming shyly round the corner beyond the water butt. Rolf was bouncing around Groil, giving yelps of greeting and standing up to paw at Groil’s knees. Groil made Rolf look tiny. “Oh, hello!” Aidan said. “I thought you only came out at night.”
“Not these days,” Groil said, fending Rolf off with his enormous right hand. “I got zips now. And friends.” His bush of hair was full of dust and cobwebs. He scratched a storm of it out with his left hand as he said, “I came to say we finished the glass in the roof, me and Shaun. Want to come and look? It’s got faces in it now. Power’s up. You could speak to the High Lord now if you want.”
“What do you mea—” Aidan began.
A look of huge dismay came over Groil’s big face. He put a large finger across his lips and fell to his knees, looking imploringly at Aidan to keep quiet. Then — it was a little like watching Rolf change — Groil shrank into something smaller and darker and harder. In less than a second you might have thought Groil was a boulder at the corner of the house.
Aidan was looking at the boulder, thinking, So that’s why I can never find him in the daytime! when a loud, rather shrill voice cried out behind him, “Aha! Found you! Got you!”
Aidan whirled round. Rolf spun away from sniffing at the boulder. His hackles came up like a bush round his shoulders and like a hedge down his back. He bared his fangs and snarled.
The fat little man, standing beside Aidan with one hand out to grab his arm, backed away a step. “Keep that brute under control!” he said. He was wearing a black coat and striped trousers, as if he was going to a wedding.
Aidan stared. “I can’t,” he said. “He doesn’t like you. Who are you? Are you going to a wedding?”
“Wedding!” exclaimed the little man. “What a stupid idea!” His round face flushed. Aidan thought, Here is somebody else who looks like someone I know! Round and red and clean-shaven though the little man’s face was, it was still remarkably like Tarquin O’Connor’s.
“Then what are you doing here?” Aidan asked, not very politely. Gran would have been shocked and said something about manners maketh man. But Aidan knew the man had been about to grab him, and it was clear that both Groil and Rolf considered him to be an enemy.
The little man drew himself up to his full, fat heigh
t. “I am loyal butler to the King,” he said proudly and added, even more proudly, “I am the Puck, no less. I am come here to deliver a letter to the magician Hope from my master, when here I see you.” He waved an expensive-looking envelope in one hand. He reached out for Aidan with the other hand. “You used the wallet. There is no doubt who you be. I shall take you prisoner forthwith.”
Aidan backed away. Just like Andrew, he thought, I don’t believe this!
But Rolf evidently did believe it. He was advancing on the little man step by slow step, growling deeply. Aidan would not have credited that Rolf could look so sinister. “I — I don’t believe you,” he said. “Go away, or I’ll set my dog on you!”
Rolf didn’t wait to be told. He went from crawling to a leap, snarling hideously.
The little man — Was he really the Puck? Aidan wondered — dodged nimbly aside and got his back against the water butt. Rolf went thundering by, scrabbled to a stop and turned to attack the little man again. The Puck held up both plump hands and sang out, “Change! All change!” and Rolf was suddenly a soft-skinned small boy, kneeling on the grass and looking most unhappy.
“Ow!” he said. “That hurt.”
“I meant it to,” said the Puck. “You traitor! You are by rights one of us who do not use iron. Why are you defending a human?”
“Because you wish him harm, of course!” Rolf said angrily.
“Not I,” said the Puck. “I am going to take him softly and kindly to the King my master, and the King my master will put him softly and kindly to death.” He gave Aidan a sly little grin. “Kindly,” he said. He held both hands up again and sang, in a soft, buzzing chant:
“Come to me in hornet guise,
Come and carry off my prize.”
A dark cloud of big flying things came streaming over the roof of the house and descended on Aidan. He took his glasses off and tried to back away from them, but they were all round him, circling him, up and down and round, buzzing louder and deeper and stronger than bees. Meanwhile, the Puck was chanting again: