Lady Friday(71)

The silver chair was sunk, though Arthur could see it through the clear blue water. So he stood on the stone pillar and faced the direction Friday had. Seeing all the sleepers standing and swaying all around him, he couldn’t help but search for his mother’s face. Was she here? Were there other people he knew?

‘Hurry!’ called out Scamandros, who was looking closely at the back of one of the sleeper’s heads.

Arthur took a deep breath, raised his arms as he had seen Friday do, and concentrated his thoughts on the Fifth Key. Just to be sure, he also spoke aloud, though quietly, so only he could hear.

‘Fifth Key, return the experiences you hold to these poor people, so that they are just as they were before Friday stole their precious lives. Repair their memories and give back all their happinesses—’ He paused for the briefest instant, wondering whether that was all they needed, but in that same moment knew that it was not. He would not himself be content to have only his happy memories.

‘—and all their sorrows. Thank you.’

The Key flashed with multicoloured light, and streamers exploded out from Arthur’s hand, snaking back across the silver-mirrored lake to connect with all the sleepers, making for just a few seconds a brilliant shining lattice of every colour of the rainbow.

Then the streamers were gone and the mirror in Arthur’s hand grew dull. As the sleepers still swayed and shuffled in their places, Arthur spread his wings and flew back to the others.

‘Did it work?’ Arthur shouted in dismay as he landed. ‘They don’t look any better!’

Scamandros leaned back from the head he was inspecting, pushed his glasses farther up his forehead, and shouted back, ‘Yes! Most, if not all, the stolen experience has been returned. The sleep is a different matter, merely an instruction from Friday, easily broken. But I suggest we leave them asleep until they can be returned.’

‘You have done well, Arthur,’ said the Will, who had spat out Friday and was now content to keep her wrapped under one wing. The former Trustee did not complain or struggle. She sat there, staring into space, her eyes unfocused. ‘Very well indeed.’

Arthur was not listening. He was already aloft again, flying over the crowd, searching for his mother.

‘That’s a dozen gold roundels you owe me, Fred,’ said Suzy. ‘Told you we’d get back to Arthur and get the Fifth Key before we got a decent cup of tea.’

‘We got a cup of tea at Binding Junction,’ protested Fred.

‘Not a decent cup,’ said Suzy. ‘That was poison.’

‘I wonder how we are going to get all these people back to where they belong,’ said Scamandros. ‘And now that I think of it, I wonder how we are going to get back. I forgot to pack a Transfer Plate!’





Twenty-six


‘SHE’S NOT AMONG the sleepers in the crater,’ Arthur said an hour later. The silver chair had been fished out of the lake and set up on the shore, and he was sitting on it, as the centrepiece of an impromptu court or council of war. ‘Leaf, are you sure this Harrison fellow would know if she was here?’

Harrison, who had been found hiding in the linen store, nodded from where he was kneeling in front of Arthur. Leaf, who was sitting at Arthur’s side on a wooden chair from one of the closer rooms, also nodded. Her Aunt Mango stood next to her, swaying from side to side and occasionally snoring.

‘Harrison had the records from Friday’s hospital back home of everyone sent through. I’m on the list, but there’s no mention of your mum.’

‘Someone else has taken her, then,’ said Arthur. ‘Scamandros, there can be no doubt she is not on Earth?’

‘If we could not find her through the Seven Dials, she is either shrouded by sorcery or somewhere else,’ Scamandros replied.

Arthur bit his lip, then asked the question that had been worrying him for a long time.

‘Could she be dead?’

‘Only if no one knows she is dead. Which is very unlikely.’

‘I have to find out,’ said Arthur. ‘I don’t suppose it’s any use now, but Scamandros, if I use the First Key instead of the Fifth, will it contaminate me less?’

‘No, Arthur,’ Scamandros said sadly.

‘Thought not,’ Arthur muttered. He raised the mirror, glad that he couldn’t see the crocodile ring and its measure of his sorcerous contamination under the gauntlet of the Second Key. ‘Friday, I charge you by the power of the Fifth Key to tell me truly if you know anything of what has happened to my mother since last Thursday, in the time of Earth, my home.’

‘I know nothing,’ whispered Lady Friday. ‘I would have taken your mother, if she had been there for the taking. But she was not among the patients of the temporary hospital from which I took my final selection. I would have so enjoyed her experiences,