“Romanov’s called her,” Nick said, and sighed. Then he cursed again because he couldn’t seem to raise magelight.
“You had it on your forehead when I first saw you,” I said.
“That was only because Maxwell Hyde gave it to me,” he said. He was really mortified. He had to get Toby to lead him. “And I suppose we’ll be blundering along here for hours,” he grumbled.
I don’t know if it was hours. It felt entirely timeless to me. And, as Grundo said, it was better than having to do goat leaps across infinity. Anything was better, to my mind. I just kept hoping that we would arrive in time and that I could manage to raise the land in the way I had discussed with Romanov. And wondering what awful thing might happen if I did.
To take my mind off it, I said to Grundo, “You knew about the Izzys’ glamour because you were doing the same thing to me, weren’t you?”
He just gave me one of his smoothly guilty looks and changed the subject. “What did that man Joel mean about atonement?”
“He and another prayerboy murdered their Prayermaster ten years ago,” Nick said. “He may think he’s making up for that.”
“What, by messing up Blest and a hundred other worlds?” Toby said. “That doesn’t make sense!”
“Taking them over in the name of righteousness,” Nick said. “It must make sense to him, or he wouldn’t have been working so hard.”
They went on trying to understand it, and it didn’t help me at all. Nick had told me not to be so tense all the time, but I couldn’t help it. It seemed to me I had every reason to be tense. I kept thinking of my parents, hidden in that cotton stuff so that I hadn’t even been able to find them, draped in prayer spell, hardly able to ease a crick in their necks, let alone their aching feet, standing, standing, while a religious madman wove the spell tighter and tighter yet. And I knew that if things had gone wrong, Romanov and the Izzys could be standing in that crowd by now, draped in prayer spell, too, and we might be the only ones left who could do anything to help Blest.
Just as I thought I couldn’t bear any more, the dark path took us downhill into a bright, misty morning, and we were back almost where we had started, in Grandad’s garden in London.
Dora was
standing by the stump of the goat’s stake, looking woebegone. “The goat’s gone,” she said. “Did you know?”
She did not seem in the least surprised at our sudden arrival. When Toby went up to her and wrapped his arms around her, she patted his head in an absentminded way and said, “Where were you all yesterday? You should have been here.”
Toby looked up at her. “What day is it?”
“Sunday morning,” Dora told him. “Not to worry. You’re all here now.”
Toby twisted round to look at Nick. “We should have rescued salamanders from the airport last night.”
“There isn’t a thing we can do about that now,” Nick said. “Dora, you do drive Maxwell Hyde’s car sometimes, don’t you? Would you mind very much driving us all to …” He looked round at me. “Where, Roddy?”
Romanov had told me of five places where you could raise the land. “One place was not too far from London,” I said. “It hasn’t got a name. He just described it. If we take the main road west, I’ll say when I think we’re there.”
Dora seemed perfectly willing to drive us. Nick said we’d find some food and eat it in the car, and we were all hurrying toward the house when Grundo growled in my ear, “Salamanders. They were all over the place when we were here before. Where are they?”
He was right to ask. When we had rushed out to find Helga, I hadn’t exactly been looking for salamanders, but I had known they were there, either scooting out of our way or curled up in warm places, watching us. Now they were not here. If I concentrated very hard, I could sense some of them. They were in hiding, very deep hiding, crouched up, nervous and afraid. The rest were just not there.
This was not the only thing wrong. Now I was attending, I knew everything was too quiet. I had been in London on a Sunday before, of course, and it was always much quieter than on a weekday. But before, there had always been the hum and mutter of distant people and remote traffic or the occasional thunder of a bus. Now there was hardly any sound, not even from pigeons or sparrows. When I looked at Grandad’s garden, it was standing perfectly still. No insects flew; not a leaf twitched. It was—well—not right.
TWO RODDY & NICK
RODDY
Nick has just come down here to the dining room to tell me he thinks he can’t write about some of this next part. I can’t say I blame him. I’m going to do my best to put everything in, but there is at least one bit I don’t know. I said he must write that. He says he’ll try.
Anyway, my feeling of something being very wrong got worse as we drove out of London. Because it was such a hot, sultry day, Dora folded back the top of Grandad’s car, and we could look up at the sky. The sky was wrong. There were clouds in the blueness, very pale white, streaky clouds, and instead of being slanted across the sky, as such clouds usually are, these were in a great stationary swirl, with long, vague arms of cloud stretching out of the swirl. Each long, vague arm went stretching away downward to some point that was out of sight over the horizon. Nick said it was like the ghost of a tornado.
Everything was very misty, too, and statue-still, with the normal summer colors looking unclear and rather dark, as if they were reflected in deep, thick water. None of it smelled quite right. And there were none of the transparent folks tumbling in the hedges in the wind from the car.
When the road brought us into sight of the green line of the Ridgeway Hills, running along the skyline to our left, those hills were nearly hidden by low, gray, moving clouds that formed big, puffy blue-gray waves, which were all cascading and rushing westward faster than the car. By the time the road brought us nearer to the hills, we were in those clouds. Hot white vapors almost hid the road. Dora was forced to slow right down, so that we could actually see the mist surging across us in waves, galloping into the west.
We were almost at the right place by then. I could feel the strange tug and pull of it. I was fairly sure it was the same place that Grundo and I had felt on our way to London. Grundo, Toby, and I all cried out, “Here it is! We’re nearly there!” and I said to Dora, “If you could take the next turning left …”
“Oh, no,” she said.