‘This isn’t your world!’ I say, dodging the blow, raising my arms to defend myself as it hits out with its claws. My back aches, my head is full of echoes, and I don’t want to fight any more. ‘You’re not a wolf,’ I say, as the claws snag on my cloak. I whirl away, dancing out of its reach. ‘You have to go back! Go back now. I don’t want to kill you.’
‘Hah, you think you’ll have the chance!’ It roars, taking a great run at me. ‘You’re half-dead yourself, boy!’
Sounds like Grandfather, I think, as snow falls around me. I pull myself up, and the creature rears up, and everything aches, everything is cold and dark, but Angel is out there somewhere, and so there is a way. She’s so sure that there’s a way, so determined to change it all. The thought warms my blood and lends me strength. The creature darts at me, its jaws wide, and I duck down low, raising my arms for the last time, striking at the part of its neck that is vulnerable.
‘I’m sorry,’ I whisper, as the creature crumples to the ground. ‘Forgive us.’
Silence. All around me, silence.
The raksasa dissolves to dust before my eyes, and it occurs to me that the school is in total darkness now. That somehow an entire evening has passed while I’ve been fighting this thing. The night grows thicker, shadows stretch. I look up at the moon, and over towards the house, and Angel is fighting, while I stand here just breathing. She is reading a spell that calls for sacrifice, and the barrier at the house is broken; any number of them could make their way through the rift.
So I run.
The corridors are dark, and floorboards creak under the patterned carpet as I try to find my way to the bare little room where we found the rift. The pale faces in the portraits loom out at me like moons, and they watch every move, and there’s a bustle in the air of their awareness, but they do not speak. I’m fairly glad of it, since I’m trying to do all this without disturbing Aoife and Sal, but it is a bit unnerving.
Also, after a while I have to admit to myself that I’m lost. I’m lost, and time is precious. I turn to the nearest picture, of a man sitting behind the desk in the library. His dark eyes are pensive as he looks out at me.
‘Which way?’ I ask.
‘Which way to which?’ he asks in a sing-song voice.
‘The room we found with the rift. You remember. You all shouted about it. I need to find it now.’
‘For humanity?’
‘Yes. And for Bavar.’
He leans forward, propping his elbows on the desk.
‘You will care for our boy when others see him, and he is not as they are? You will be there, when all this is over, and he is alone with shadows?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘We cannot speak, we cannot live without the magic that is connected to the rift,’ he says. ‘We will miss it, but that is not the concern. Our time is past, long ago. Bavar will lose us all, and that will be hard for him.’
‘You won’t speak any more?’ I look around me at all the faces, all the ancestors who have called my name, who have surrounded Bavar with their love for so long. ‘Even his grandfather?’
My voice is a husk, tearing through my chest as I realize the full extent of it. How can I do that to him, cut him off from all of his family, when he’s already lost his parents?
‘His grandfather died twenty years ago,’ the man says, shaking his head. ‘He is as tired as the rest of us. What is more important, Angel? You must decide!’
‘Tell me the way,’ I say in a low voice, steeling myself.
I’m not sure I can do it.
But I’m at least going to find the right room before I make that decision.
Run. Run. Staggering, stumbling, slipping on ice, jumping fences, crossing frozen fields, just to get there quicker. The gate is a twist of black metal, the warped ends curving wickedly into the night. The clouds begin to boil overhead as I run up the drive, and the moon is quickly lost in fire. I keep my head low and steel myself, racing up the steps as darkness creeps in the corners of my eyes and my heart trips in my chest. My back is on fire, every move like a new strike of its claws.
‘Angel,’ I mutter.
‘ANGEL!’ shouts the house around me as the front door opens.
I can see the magic in the air now, glowing through the darkness like a thin silver cobweb that threads through every ancestor and catches at me, and sends me on with power in my veins.
They guide me with gentle voices, and as I pass each one I feel them more clearly than ever. The essence of them is warm; it reaches out and pushes me onward when I would falter. Down steep wooden steps, over landings and hallways, across vast ballrooms until I am there, before the door of the bare room where worlds collide.
And then I stop.
Bavar will have fought the monster. He’ll have sent it back to its own world; our world is safe for now. I tell myself there’s no rush. I should wait for him. I can’t do this alone.
‘YOU AREN’T DOING IT ALONE,’ says his mother from the frame next to the door.
‘How could you leave him like that?’
Her shoulders raise and fall in a shrug I know so well.
‘IT ISN’T FOREVER.’
‘Will you come back, if I do this?’
‘I DON’T KNOW,’ she says. ‘WE ARE NOT WHAT WE USED TO BE; WE ARE NOT THE PARENTS HE NEEDS.’
‘So if I do this, he’ll be alone. All the others will be gone as well.’
‘THEIR LIKENESSES WILL REMAIN, IN THE PORTRAITS. THE MEMORIES OF THEIR VOICES. HE WILL UNDERSTAND.’ She leans forward in the chaise longue, her eyes glittering. ‘DO IT, ANGEL. DO IT FOR ALL OF US.’ Her sharp teeth catch on the words, and I see then the desolation that flirts at Bavar. She was like him, once. ‘DO IT NOW, BECAUSE YES, WE LEFT HIM. AND WE SHOULDN’T HAVE, BUT WE DID, AND WE CAN’T GET TO YOU FAST ENOUGH NOW. THERE’S NOTHING WE CAN DO; IT’S UP TO YOU.’
I take the book out, wrench open the door. The world blazes around me. I take the little knife and cut into my palm, and my tears are already falling as I start to speak the words, and I don’t know whether I want this to work or not, but I’m doing it, and whatever happens, at least I was here. I wasn’t hiding in a cupboard, too afraid to meet the demons who tore my life apart. I was here, doing everything I could to stop it from ever happening again.
The house has dwindled to silence around me and I seem to have become lost in its maze. I tread softly, as walls melt around me, and the carpet leads me forward. I tread, and cling to walls and banisters and nooks and crannies, and I make my way through the forest that swims in my head and makes all things nonsense.
‘Nonsense,’ I whisper. ‘It’s all nonsense.’
And nobody corrects me. The portraits are quiet; the eyes of my ancestors are dark and hollow. What has happened here?
Am I too late?
The door to the room is open. The rift is wide, belching rage and flames. Angel is curled in a corner, the book open on the floor beside her.
‘No,’ I whisper, noticing the knife by her side.
She looks up.