‘You won’t. The Yearning somehow manages to find the thing you’re most afraid of, and then makes you worry about it all the time. I knew a very kind vicar once who had the Yearning. He became terribly afraid that he might start calling people names in the street. He would begin to wish someone a good day, and then something in his head would suggest adding “you ugly old cow” or “you pathetic idiot”. He never actually said those things, he just became very scared he would. The Yearning always makes you think of things that are the complete opposite of what you would actually do. But no one ever does the thing that they fear. Not ever. You can’t let the Yearning take you over. The worst thing is to start believing in it.’
‘If you believe in it, then does it come true?’
‘No. It just feels terrible. And if you start doing the things it wants you to – for example, when the vicar decided not to go out in case he really did call people names – then it completely takes over your life.’
‘Is there nothing I can do until we get to London?’
‘The main thing is to be yourself and ignore these feelings. You could also try to meditate. That’ll probably give you a bit of lifeforce. And I’ll go and see what they’ve got in the kitchens. Maybe something pickled would help. When the Yearning comes, you must just accept it and try not to worry about it. Relax as much as you can. Resisting the feelings will just deplete your lifeforce even further.’
‘What will happen if it depletes further?’ asked Effie.
‘You just feel bad for longer.’ Pelham smiled kindly. ‘The only danger of the Yearning in the Realworld is entering a cycle where you become so afraid all the time that you drain your own lifeforce as quickly as it is being topped up. Then it can take a long time to get better.’
‘Can I die?’
‘No,’ said Pelham. ‘Not from the Yearning, not in this world.
Lots of people in the Realworld are in this state all the time, not recognising what it is, because they have no concept of lifeforce, and they don’t know that islanders need magical energy too. But it’s only on the mainland that you can die from lack of lifeforce. All that can happen here is that you feel worse.’
‘I can’t imagine feeling any worse,’ said Effie gloomily. She twisted the ring on her finger. Should she take it off? It had almost killed her that first time she wore it. But of course then it had drained her physical energy, not her magical lifeforce. As far as Effie knew, her ring still helped her generate M-currency. Although it hadn’t done a very good job of it lately.
‘Well, don’t try, because if there’s one thing that is guaranteed to make you feel worse, it’s thinking about it. Try to be cheerful. And meditate.’
‘How exactly do you meditate?’
‘You must already know how.’
Effie shook her head.
‘But what about when you use the calling card to get to Truelove House. You have to be in a meditative state for that to work, surely?’
‘You mean when I clear my mind and breathe deeply?’
‘Exactly. Do that.’
‘Is that all meditating is?’
‘Yes. That’s all it is. In fact, you don’t even have to breathe deeply. You just try to clear your mind, and then fail – everyone fails, because it’s almost impossible. But you just become slowly more aware of yourself. And sometimes you find you can switch off your thoughts for a few moments, and that’s when you heal.’
‘I think I know what you mean.’
‘Excellent. I’ll leave you to it. I’m off to the kitchens.’
‘Pelham?’
‘What?’
‘Please don’t leave me on my own. I don’t know what I’ll do. I don’t think I can bear it.’
Pelham sighed. ‘I am going to leave you on your own, and you are going to meditate. It will bring you some peace, I’m sure of it.’
‘But . . .’
‘You must never give in to fear,’ said Pelham. ‘Fear strips your lifeforce faster than anything else.’
‘But . . .’
‘Have faith in yourself.’
Pelham Longfellow walked off across the grass towards a wooden walkway leading through small, old-looking trees to a large veranda with a door. Effie felt terrified. It was so unlike her to feel this way. Then that thought terrified her too. How could she have become so unlike herself in just a few short hours? But, following Pelham’s instructions, she accepted the feeling. For a few seconds it got a lot worse, so much so she thought she wouldn’t be able to bear it. Then it went away. When it came again, she did the same thing. Again, the feeling got worse, and then better. This time it was worse for a shorter time, and better for a longer time. It was like waves breaking on a ragged shore, again and again, with the tide slowly going out.
Effie began trying to meditate. She was soon joined by a bird with a crest on its head that looked like a Mohican from the olden days. Then another bird came. It was small, with a pointed beak, and its tiny body was a mixture of green, blue, red and yellow patches. The sight of the bird made Effie smile. It was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. Had the Yearning made her think that too? How strange. Having her soul on the outside made everything different, it seemed.
There was a small slice of cake on a plate next to her. Pelham must have brought it for her before. She was feeling a little bit hungry, but so, too, presumably, were these birds. Effie held out a few crumbs on her hand, and then the brightly coloured bird actually came and took them! Effie smiled again, and added a few more crumbs. She threw a larger bit of cake to the other bird on the grass. It ate it rather comically, with its Mohican bobbing up and down. The smaller bird was now eating out of Effie’s palm. Very slowly, Effie’s lifeforce started to increase, tiny bit by tiny bit.
Once the cake was all gone, Effie closed her eyes and began to meditate. It wasn’t easy at first. She kept thinking about the Great Library. She couldn’t help trying to work out what had happened to her there, and what it was.
She had to try to meditate. She closed her eyes, but all she could see were the panelled doors of the Great Library and then the yellow walls with the precise mint-green stripes, and the rows and rows of books, and . . .
The one thing she was sure of was that Cosmo had been in the library with her, but that for some reason he hadn’t been able to see it. She’d needed to tell him where everything was, and even how to get out. It had been as if he were blind. Perhaps he had seen the library differently? But what sort of place was it that two people could see it completely differently? And why was it so dangerous? Effie was sure that her experience in the Great Library had completely drained what had remained of her lifeforce, but why?
Effie managed to clear her mind for two, maybe three, seconds. It was calming, restorative. But then she opened her eyes with a start. She was in the Realworld again, wasn’t she? In South Africa, thousands of miles from home, and running on Realworld time. She didn’t even know what day it was. Which meant that everyone back home would be looking for her, and worrying and . . . When she got back, her father would probably never let her out of the house again.
The journey to the airport should have been exciting. There were mountains and baboons and views of the blue glistening sea in the distance. But all Effie could think of were the dangerous and sad things everywhere and how much trouble she’d be in when she got home.
As promised, Pelham cast an upgrade spell at the airport that gave them both first-class tickets, which meant a comfortable wait in a lounge surrounded by free sandwiches and fruit, and then their own little suite on the plane, with their own beds, dressing gowns and soft cotton pyjamas. Effie wished she could enjoy it. She’d never flown before, and had always wanted to. And in such luxury! But in the end she slept through the whole flight, dreaming of strange libraries and sets of stairs that kept going up for ever with no obvious way down.
When the plane landed at Heathrow, Effie barely noticed the private golden jet that was taxiing in to the gate next to theirs, with
the words ALBION FREAKE INC on the side of it. And she completely missed the man himself, with his shock of bright red hair and silver lamé pinstriped suit, as he made his way through the airport and into a waiting gold limousine.
22
‘Darlings,’ breathed Skylurian Midzhar over breakfast on Thursday. ‘I do declare that we have almost reached our target. There are only twelve more copies of The Chosen Ones to come in and then we have done it. Albion will be so happy when he arrives later today.’
Terrence Deer-Hart looked rather put out.
‘Albion Freake’s arriving today?’
‘Yes, my sweet.’
‘And he’s a . . . friend, you say?’
‘A business associate. I told you about the limited-edition single volume we are creating for him, didn’t I?’
‘Yes, you did.’ Terrence chewed his lower lip. He almost looked as if he were about to start crying. ‘You told me all about how Laurel Wilde, as your favourite and most bestselling author ever, had been chosen for this extreme honour and . . .’ Terrence had gone quite red and suddenly seemed to have forgotten to breathe. He spluttered, blanched, and reached for a glass of water.
‘Have you heard anything from my mother?’ said Raven.
‘No, darling, sorry. She’s outside pager contact just now.’
‘Do you even know what country she’s in?’
‘Perhaps Bolivia? One does so easily lose track of authors on tour. I’m sure she’s doing jolly well.’
‘Why am I not on a book tour?’ said Terrence.
‘Because you are here with me, my sweet.’
‘But why does Laurel Wilde get to go on tour and . . .’ Terrence remembered that of course Laurel Wilde was not on a book tour at all, but had been kidnapped and imprisoned in an old croft on the moor. But, frankly, even the very idea of another author being on a book tour while he, Terrence, had not even been allowed to write his first serious adult novel was just too much to bear.
Skylurian and Raven exchanged a look. This man was extremely stupid. Raven knew Skylurian was up to something, and Skylurian knew that Raven knew she was up to something. But all this man cared about were his sales figures and his hair. For a moment Skylurian forgot why he was even here. Oh yes. He’d been sent to find out information about how the Truelove girl travelled between worlds. And at least he had been useful in that respect. He’d told her all she needed to know. The sooner she could smite this silly, pathetic man, the better. Although perhaps she would just toy with him a little while longer. As well as being stupid he was, she had to admit, rather attractive.
‘She can’t stay here for three days!’ said Pelham Longfellow to Dr Black. ‘Is there nothing you can do that’s any quicker?’
Effie was sitting in a comfortable leather chair in the office of Dr Black in Soho, London. She’d met Dr Black once before, on the day he had performed the surgery that had been supposed to send her grandfather Griffin to the Otherworld after he had died in the Realworld. Effie had never been to London before. It was all so interesting, but her tired mind couldn’t take much of it in. Outside the window women walked down the thin, cobbled street wearing skin-tight leggings with ballet leotards and faux fur coats, or slogan T-shirts from the previous century with fleece-lined denim jackets.
Many of the buildings were semi-ruins now, of course, and had been even before the worldquake, but most of them had flowers growing out of their crumbling walls and spilling from homemade window boxes – even in November. Effie watched a cat through the window opposite that seemed also to be watching her.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Dr Black. ‘Her lifeforce really is down to nothing. I need to put her on a drip and try to get it back up as fast as I can, but in reality that is going to take at least three days.’
‘Her father will have called the police by then. And maybe the Northern Guild. He has some old connections there, I believe.’
‘The Northern Guild is problematic, I agree.’
‘Indeed. So . . .?’
‘Can we not simply tell the father she’s here? That would be the best course of action.’
‘No,’ said Pelham. ‘He’s not a supporter of our cause. He absolutely can’t know that this has happened. I’m regressing his memories until we get back, but, as you know, that kind of magic is extremely costly, and I can’t keep it up for more than another day. Is there anything you can send her away with? Anti-Yearning tablets, maybe?’
‘We don’t suppress symptoms here,’ said Dr Black. ‘Probably the only thing we won’t do.’ He smiled the smile of a man who knows that what he does is not approved of by most people, and that those people are all wrong.
‘I realise that. But can’t you put whatever was going to be in the drip into tablet form? Or cast it as a spell?’
‘I am no witch, Longfellow. And anyway, I thought you understood what we do here? I thought you – and your kind – even disapproved of it?’
‘Yes, well, we do usually. But we can’t leave a child in this state. And she has helped us all with her recent actions. She returned the missing book. We have to repay her somehow.’
‘You do realise that what you’ve asked for is the top treatment requested by the Diberi in their Swiss clinic?’
‘We can live with that in this case.’
‘Anyway, it’s immaterial if you won’t leave her here. We simply can’t complete the treatment.’
Pelham Longfellow sighed. ‘Is there really nothing else? I may not have mentioned that money is no object.’
‘I spoke to the directors earlier today. They don’t want money.’
‘You say that as if they want something that is not money.’
‘Yes,’ said Dr Black, slowly.
‘Well? What is it?’
‘They want you to leave London. Turn a blind eye to the factory in Walthamstow.’
‘But—’ began Pelham.
‘They know how much you want Skylurian Midzhar, and how long you’ve been working on her operations here. But she’s small fry, compared to the bigger Diberi.’ Dr Black looked troubled by something. ‘What she’s done in Walthamstow . . . I can’t exactly say I approved of it at first, but what I can say is that it works. No one has to suffer the Yearning any more. Yes, yes, I know all the objections you’re going to make. But whatever else she has done, Skylurian Midzhar, the corrupt and dreadful Diberi, has actually produced something that genuinely increases the goodness of the world.’
‘It’s a short cut. It goes against everything—’
‘But you came here for a short cut, did you not?’
‘Yes. Because the circumstances are—’
‘Everyone believes their own circumstances deserve special treatment, Longfellow. And that is what we can now offer. Special treatment for everyone.’
‘But—’
Dr Black opened a drawer in his large desk. ‘Perhaps you’ve been wondering what these look like? I know you’ve been making enquiries. Here.’ He held out a small glass box, in which there were three clear capsules containing a dark gold, slightly shimmering substance. ‘You can have these. But only on condition that you leave London. Let’s say for a year? You could go to Europe, chase the bigger Diberi. We have no problems with that – in that, we’re on the same side.’
Pelham Longfellow took the box from Dr Black.
‘And they work, do they?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘They’re not like the old-fashioned anti-Yearning treatments?’
‘Not at all. They replace lifeforce directly, in a usable form.’
‘And how is that different from just force-feeding the child owls’ eyeballs or guinea-pig hearts?’
‘You know full well that those methods give tiny amounts of currency to those whose kharakter and art take them to the darker areas. This child is pure light. She’s a traveller. Her spirit is partly Otherworld. Quite a lot of it, judging by the tests I did. That’s why this is affecting her so strongly. Anyway, those methods won’t work on her. They?
??d simply make her worse.’
‘So what’s in these?’ asked Longfellow.
‘Concentrated . . .’ Dr Black’s eyes moved slowly from Pelham Longfellow’s to his desk top.
‘Concentrated . . .?’
Dr Black sighed angrily. ‘You already know what they are, Longfellow. It’s up to you whether you want to take them and give them to the girl or not.’
‘And how many thousands of krubles do they cost?’
‘As I said before, you will agree to leave London, and let the factory remain open. Stop investigating Skylurian Midzhar. If you can agree to that, the medication is free. Think of it as being part of a trial.’
‘You’re not giving me any choice, are you?’
‘Sorry,’ said Dr Black. ‘No.’
Pelham Longfellow was quiet as the black cab wound its way through Bloomsbury, with its overgrown parks and gardens, and its strange basements with puppet shows and fortune tellers, towards the train station. Effie was thinking hard about everything she’d heard in Dr Black’s office. She was feeling a little better after being given an injection and a treatment with oils and flower petals rubbed into her skin, but she was still deeply troubled by everything. Why had Pelham Longfellow agreed to leave London? To save my life, thought Effie. And then she felt ashamed. She’d got something dreadfully wrong at some point, she just wasn’t sure what.
‘Pelham?’ she said.
‘Hmm?’ he replied, distracted by something he was typing into his pager.
‘I know what Skylurian Midzhar is up to.’
‘Well, it doesn’t matter now, even if you do.’
‘But Pelham?’
‘You must rest, child. You’ve got a long train journey ahead.’
‘But . . .’
‘I’ve just agreed not to investigate Skylurian Midzhar any more. Which is perhaps a good thing, given that no one knows where exactly she is.’
‘I do,’ said Effie.
Pelham looked up. ‘How?’
‘She’s at my friend’s house, staying with her mother. I went to the Otherworld to tell Clothilde and Rollo and Cosmo everything I knew, but I didn’t get the chance. I think she’s planning something big. I mean, I think I know what she’s planning. It involves Albion Freake and . . .’