Lily and the Prisoner of Magic (9 page)

‘Think of the theatre,’ Henrietta yapped.

Lily was trying, hauling up memories of their act, and the excitement of the performance; how clever Henrietta was with her tricks; Georgie pretending to be entranced – except that one time when she really had been unconscious… No. Lily shuddered and pushed that thought away quickly. Daniel, then, who had rescued them off the street and let them stay, who was running the whole theatre when he wasn’t that much older than Georgie, who loved magic so much that he was risking everything by hiding a dragon in plain sight across the back of his stage. The cleverness of the illusions, the new Vanishing Cabinet… She was so tired…

‘It’s working!’ Georgie squeaked.

Lily’s eyes jerked open for a second, and she saw the darkness of the summerhouse turn misty and grey around them as they went somewhere else. But she really had no idea where. It felt like that delicious moment just as she fell asleep, where everything faded away. Except that the aching sense that something wasn’t right stayed with her.

‘Lily!’

A sharp pain jerked her awake again, gasping, and Lily shook her head, unsure what had happened. They weren’t in the palace gardens any longer – the faint chirping of waking birds had been replaced by a deep, soft silence, and it was utterly dark. Her ear throbbed, and she could feel a trickle of wetness running down her neck.

‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ Henrietta wailed. ‘But I couldn’t think of any other way.’

‘You bit her!’ Georgie sounded horrified.

‘I had to. Lily, wake up, where are we?’

Lily laughed wearily. ‘We’re vanished. We’re nowhere. Where does the audience think Nicholas and Mary go to, when they disappear out of that cabinet?’

‘No one knows…’ Georgie said faintly. ‘Just – somewhere.’

‘Well, we’re somewhere, then.’

‘The air smells bad, here.’ Henrietta wriggled uncomfortably. ‘There isn’t enough of it. Lily, unless you want me to bite you again, and harder, take us back to the theatre. Now.’

‘Stupid, reckless children!’ someone shouted suddenly, and there was a sharp flash of light before they landed in a tangled knot in the middle of the stage.

The dragon was standing over them, his sides heaving and his scales glowing with a burning silvery light. Each scale seemed to sparkle at the edges, like the facets of a precious stone, and his eyes were fiery.

‘What were you doing?’ he snarled, clawing them upright none too gently. ‘I nearly lost you – a few steps further and I would never have been able to haul you back.’

‘We were lost,’ Lily muttered, pressing her hand to her bleeding ear. ‘I’m sorry, I was so tired I couldn’t find the magic to bring us back here, and I was trying so hard to remember where we were going. All I could think of was the act, and the vanishing cabinet, and somehow I vanished us.’

‘Travelling by magic is one of the most advanced enchantments,’ the dragon hissed, coiling himself around and around them so that his scales flashed blurrily in the backs of Lily’s eyes. He darted his head towards the girls, sniffing at them anxiously. ‘You must never try it without being certain where you’re going, and even more importantly,
when
. You could have ended up somewhere before time, and then where would you be?’

Lily giggled out of pure tiredness, and he snapped his massive teeth at her and then shuddered, all down his great length, and slumped to the stage so heavily that the boards shook and a curtain of dust shimmered down from the high ceiling. ‘You laugh, but only because you do not understand,’ he growled, his head turned away.

Lily sank down next to him, resting her head on one of his forelegs. ‘I know I don’t. I wasn’t really laughing. I’m just so tired I couldn’t help it. And I didn’t want to travel by magic – we had to escape and we couldn’t do anything else!’

‘I could have flown you out of here and taken you somewhere safe,’ the dragon muttered stubbornly, glancing back over his shoulder. ‘You shouldn’t have gone.’

‘Only if you’d broken down the walls of the theatre!’ Georgie pointed out. ‘And then loads of people would have seen you. Daniel would have had half a theatre left, and the Queen’s Men breathing down his neck, wanting to know why he was harbouring criminals. They’d probably have arrested
everyone
!’

The dragon snorted irritably, but was clearly unable to think of an answer. ‘You need someone to teach you,’ he hissed at last, turning back to face them and letting trails of smoke snake out over the stage. ‘I don’t know enough about humans and magic – and everything has changed since I last knew an apprentice. We must find you someone. You aren’t safe, wandering around untaught. Particularly being as strong as you are.’

Lily nodded. ‘We know. We’re going to. Princess,
Miss
Jane, I mean, thinks we should go to America, and find a magician she knows.’

The dragon’s eyes hooded thoughtfully. ‘America? That new-found land?’ Then he sighed. ‘I suppose it isn’t, any longer. Someone you trust?’ he demanded sharply, turning to the princess, who had seated herself wearily on a small gilt chair that the acrobats used for balancing.

She smiled at him. ‘Indeed. And you will too. A Fell. Rose Fell.’

He brightened at once, even his scales shimmering more strongly. ‘Ah, well! In that case… But I do not think I can fly that far…’ he muttered, staring down at his lethal claws, as he couldn’t meet their eyes. ‘Not yet. I am not up to my old strength, still. Halfway, perhaps.’

Lily shook her head. ‘I hadn’t even thought of asking you to fly us. We’re going to try and get aboard a ship, though we aren’t sure how.’ She yawned. ‘We’ll talk to Colette, later on…’

The dragon nodded his great head, and then stretched out his neck and twitched a folded drape out from behind the curtains, flicking it out so that it crumpled and nested between his forelegs. ‘You can sleep there. I want to know where you are. Especially if you’re about to travel to the other side of the world without me.’

‘Will it really work?’ Lily asked doubtfully, staring down at the trunk. The space looked tight, tighter even than the illusion cabinets.

Sam shrugged. ‘Can’t see why not. Why would they be suspicious?’

‘I suppose.’ Lily frowned, wriggling her shoulders, and turned to Colette. ‘Will you unpack them quickly? Please?’

Henrietta sniffed. ‘She’ll have to be careful, Lily. It would be suspicious if she went to unpack right away.’ She jumped up, resting her front paws on the edge of the open trunk and sniffing at the false bottom and the hiding place underneath. ‘She’ll want to take me for a walk up and down the deck first, I should think. That’s what someone who didn’t have two stowaways in their luggage would do.’

Lily scowled. ‘I think it would be better if you hid away with me. You’re too recognisable.’

Henrietta shook her head briskly. ‘No one’s ever seen me with Colette. And I don’t do well in confined spaces. Not after however many years it was being a painting. I come over all peculiar inside, and you certainly wouldn’t want to be shut up with me.’

Georgie groaned in disgust, and then gave Lily a last hug. ‘Make sure you’ve labelled them properly, won’t you?’ she begged Colette. ‘Cabin baggage. I really don’t want to end up in the hold.’ She stepped quickly into the trunk and lay down, fussily arranging her skirts so that they wouldn’t crease.

‘I’ve drilled holes in this, Miss Georgie,’ Sam assured her, as he slid the board over her, and Lily shivered. The thought of being shut away in the dark was even worse after their strange adventure three days ago. What if when she couldn’t see, she found she couldn’t feel either, and she was back in that dark emptiness between the worlds?

‘Lily. Daniel’s already gone to call a hansom cab. And Colette needs to be able to put her costumes in on top of you. It has to be now.’ Sam wrapped his arms around her, smelling comfortably of pipe tobacco and gravy, and she kissed his whiskery cheek.

‘I know.’ She lay down, screwing her eyes closed so as not to see him shutting her in, and took an experimental breath. The air was hot, and a little dusty, but it was there. She didn’t need to scream.

‘Lifting you now,’ Sam muttered. ‘Don’t you talk. We’ll be taking you out to the carriage, you can’t let the driver suspect anything.’

Lily nodded, and then realised that no one could see her.

‘It’s like the theatre, only ten times more so,’ Georgie muttered. ‘And it isn’t painted on a canvas flat, it’s real.’

Lily nodded. The ship was so large that Colette had told them they needn’t remain hidden in her room, as they’d expected they might have to. There were a great many other children, and provided they didn’t make themselves too obvious, she was sure that no one would suspect the girls weren’t meant to be on board. Luckily, she had been given a first-class cabin, so as to be closer to the room where she was to perform, and so there was room enough for Lily and Georgie to sleep on the little sofa and the padded seat below the porthole. Colette was very good at sneaking food into her bag for them from meals – she said that Daniel had taught her sleight of hand.

The
Marianna
was one of the newest ocean liners, fitted out to be more of a floating hotel than a ship. It was due to take only six days to steam to New York, and the passengers – or at least the first class-ones – were spending those days in petted luxury. The ship’s crew seemed to spend most of their time answering silly questions from passengers and very little time actually sailing the ship, as far as Lily could see. Henrietta wasn’t the only animal on board, either. The promenade deck was full of fussy little lapdogs, and one elderly first-class passenger had brought her parrot, which had already escaped twice, and they’d only been sailing for a day and a half.

One of the ship’s stewards had already been forced to explain to Mrs Archibald that the parrot must stay in her cabin this evening, which she was very indignant about. But other passengers had objected to his trying to join in with last night’s musical soiree – he seemed to be convinced that he was a tenor, and he let out ear-splitting squawks to join in with all the high notes. Mrs Archibald was now sitting in one of the armchairs at the front of the gilded music room, glowering and making life difficult for the waiters by insisting on particular sorts of tea leaves that they didn’t have.

Lily and Georgie were lurking in the least popular chairs at the side of the music room, trying to look as though they were meant to be there. If anyone asked, they were planning to say that Colette had asked them to look after Henrietta, who was enjoying shipboard life far too much to stay in the cabin. Lily was slightly worried that all the attention and compliments she was receiving were going to go to her head, and she would forget herself and ask the next admiring lady to scratch her behind the other ear, please.

‘Is that a real tree?’ Georgie asked, staring at an enormous palm apparently growing from the floor, and Henrietta helpfully trotted over to sniff at it. ‘Yes,’ she whispered, putting her front paws up on Lily’s lap. ‘There’s a pot set into the carpet.’ She whisked down again and began to thread her way around the assembled passengers, begging prettily and accepting lump sugar and bonbons.

‘It’s like that Arabian Nights backdrop they had at the theatre for the Eastern jugglers. I wonder if Queen Sophia’s palace is like this inside,’ Lily muttered, starting to clap as Colette emerged to sing.

Luckily, Colette was very popular with the passengers – she had mixed enough bits of opera into her usual act to make everyone feel cultured and highbrow, and the purser had asked her to add an afternoon concert as well as the evenings she had been booked for.

‘Which is all very well,’ she told Georgie anxiously as they crept back into her cabin after her concert. Luckily they could use Henrietta to stand guard at the end of the passageway, so no one saw them going into someone else’s cabin. ‘But with you two in my trunks, I haven’t brought as many costumes as I should have done. I’ll need to adapt some of my dresses; I can’t wear the same one twice.’

‘We’ll help,’ Lily told her, feeling guilty, especially as she really meant that Georgie would – Lily would be worse than useless.

‘Did you see that old lady in the front row of chairs?’ Henrietta asked. ‘The cross one?’

‘What, the parrot lady?’ Colette smiled. ‘Of course. I could borrow some costumes from her, perhaps. That purplish hair has to be a wig.’

Henrietta sniffed thoughtfully. ‘I thought so too. Well. Not a wig. But certainly not real.’

Lily stared at her. ‘What are you talking about?’

Henrietta leaped up onto the armchair, and arranged herself in her best china dog pose, the way she always did when she had something important to say. ‘She isn’t right. I couldn’t get quite close enough, but there’s something odd about her.’

Georgie shook her head irritably. ‘Well, of course there is, she’s travelling across the Atlantic with that dreadful parrot.’

‘I’m not that convinced about the parrot either,’ Henrietta said, glancing at Lily with her head on one side. ‘It didn’t smell right – it doesn’t smell at all, in fact, which is unnatural. Most parrots stink. And when those two stewards were chasing it down A deck this morning, it didn’t shed any feathers.’

Lily swallowed. ‘Is she under a glamour? Like Aunt Clara?’

Henrietta scratched one ear delicately with a hind paw. ‘Ah!’ She gave the ear a luxurious little shake. ‘Mmmm. Possibly.’

Colette was frowning. ‘A glamour? That’s like a disguise, isn’t it? So the parrot is actually what – a pigeon?’ She was smiling, as though she thought this was all rather funny, but Lily had a horrible feeling it wasn’t.

‘It doesn’t smell of pigeon either.’ Henrietta blinked at Lily solemnly, her round eyes owl-like. ‘Seems to me more like some sort of construct. It may well have been a parrot
once
. Or possibly a pigeon. A dead one.’

‘So it’s something like Marten then.’ Lily didn’t really want to say it. If she said it, it might be true. She shivered. Her mother had created her own strange, dark servant, back at Merrythought. A tangle of spells and borrowed flesh, that she had sent chasing after Lily and Georgie when they escaped the island. ‘That sort of spell-construct is very difficult, you told us. And terribly rare. You have to have a talent for it; most people never could make anything like that.’