* * *
And Jack took a horse that winter when the snow was falling on the Thames, and he rode wild and long to Cheshire, and through the remote places, and where he had owls and starlings for company, and rabbits and foxes, but nothing of human kind.
And at last he came to the great house called Tanglewreck, and he went into the wide hall, and up the oak staircase, until he came to a small room right under the eaves that no one used. There was a bed there in the shape of a swan.
This is the place, he thought, this is where Silver is, and now we are in the same place and the only thing that separates us is time.
And Jack thought about what Silver had told him of her world; how people could fly, and how they could travel great distances so quickly, but none of them could travel through time – at least not on purpose.
Jack sat on the bed. In four hundred years he could see her again, if he just sat here for four hundred years, Silver would come.
‘I miss you,’ he said, out loud, to no one.
It was nearly dusk, for the days are short in winter. Outside the ground was white. Jack got up and looked out of the window. The setting sun was rich and red, and for a moment everything – the trees, the sundial, the lawns, the hedges – burned red too, their white mantles reflecting the light.
‘Jack . . .’
He knew that voice. He turned quickly back into the room. There was no one there, but a ginger cat had come in and fallen asleep on the bed.
Table of Contents
Cover Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
1 The Clock Strikes Twelve
2 The Fish Without Fins
3 The Dark House
4 The Creature Sawn in Two
5 Mother Midnight
6 The Sunken King
7 Dog Does It
8 The Eyebat
9 Some Useful Information
10 The Dragon
11 Some More Useful Information
12 How to Keep a Promise
13 The Phoenix
14 The Cinnabar Egg
15 Rumour
16 The Captive
17 Heart of Stone
18 The Dragon Prepares a Bath
19 Trapped
20 Dog Does It Again!
21 The Truth about Sunflowers
22 The Bath of Sulphur
23 The Nigredo
24 Some Light
25 The Knight Summoned
26 1601
27 More Mother Midnight
28 The Ancestor
29 The Visitor
30 More Visitors
31 The Book of the Phoenix
32 The Keeper of the Tides
33 The Plot Thickens
34 And Twists . . .
35 Eclipse of the Heart
36 The City of Gold
37 A Barrel of Silvers
38 Abel Darkwater
39 The Truth about Gold
40 The Siege of Gold
41 The Battle of the Sun
42 Jack
43 Home
44 Time
Jeanette Winterson, The Battle of the Sun
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