The Door in the Moon (25 page)

Wharton could only feel relief.

Summer pouted. “Oh really! It was so pretty. You're always so
harsh,
Venn.”

“Believe me, I was doing you a favor. I was wrong ever to use it. It would have made you love a monster.”

She smiled up, amused. “Love!” Her laugh was a tinkle of scorn. “I don't love. Not even you. So I'm to have nothing I want, not that, and not a bracelet and not my sweet changeling?” She flicked a glance at Wharton, and then past him at Gideon.

Gideon looked away.

“What ransom do I get then, Oberon, to entice me to leave?” She was close to him now, and her hand reached out toward his, a delicate white hand that Sarah longed to slap away.

“You can have these,” a voice said behind her.

She turned.

Jake was there.
Jake with his father, David, standing close behind him. And in David's hands, dripping from his fingers, such jewels! Diamonds, rubies, sapphires.

A queen's ransom.

Wharton muttered, “My God, Jake, have you robbed a bank?”

Jake laughed. He nodded to his father, who held out his hands to Summer, and as she snatched the brilliant strings of stones from him and giggled with them against her neck, he looked at Venn and Venn looked at him.

Summer decked herself with the jewels. Gazing at herself in the mirror, she put them all on, and Sarah wondered at the intensity of her delight, because in a few minutes, surely, those same trinkets would bore her. She said quickly, “Will you release the house?”

Summer turned on bare toes. “From what?”

“The Wood.”

The faery queen gave a careless glance at the bramble-tangled corridor.

“What Wood?” she laughed.

Branches shrank. Leaves dropped into dust. Sarah turned and pushed through the arch into the Monk's Walk, seeing how the tendrils of ivy shriveled, how the green webbed bines of the Wood slithered back like snakes.

Small puffballs of fungus exploded into clouds of spore. Butterflies fled. The rich, rotten dampness of loam and soil faded.

Piers hurried past her. “Oh at last. My poor kitchens!”

She followed him, down the stone passage, out into the Long Gallery.

Midsummer Day had dawned. The sky was the palest blue. Through open casements golden sunlight slanted, and in the long wide room she saw the trees crumble, shiver, and break before her eyes to a strange green dust that sparkled and drifted in the early light.

She looked back.

Summer gave Venn the lightest of kisses. Then she went to Gideon, stood on tiptoe, and whispered something in his ear.

His pale skin flushed.

So softly only Sarah heard, he said, “This is your day, Summer.”

Outside, over the Wood, the sun burned. And all the birds cried out.

I
T WAS MIDSUMMER
and Wharton had never known one so hot.

He came down at noon after a long delicious sleep, wearing light trousers and an old loose shirt with paint stains on it. In the kitchen, Piers was humming cheerfully over the range, where a whole raft of pans and pots were bubbling.

Wharton stood and inhaled the glorious smells. “Good Lord, Piers. You must be cooking up some feast.”

“A banquet of celebration and delight.” The small man grinned, balancing a row of plates down one arm.

“Just as well. Jake's dad looks half-starved and we've all had a very busy night.”

How could it all have happened in one night? For a moment, standing there in his socks and sandals, Wharton had the strangest feeling the whole thing had just been some crazy dream, and he scratched his head absently, wondering why the length of his ears should worry him.

“Where is everyone?”

“Not sure. Maybe outside?”

Picking up some toast and a mug of tea, Wharton wandered down the corridors.

The Abbey was cool and peaceful. All the windows were wide, a delicate breeze stirred the dust. And, good grief, there was certainly plenty of that. Over busts and shelves and books and paintings, a soft carpet on the wooden boards and rugs, it lay like a fine ash, as if the magic tangle of the wild Wood had shriveled away to this green powder, this whisper of seed and sepal.

He peered into the study and the dining room but they were empty, and in the Great Hall only Horatio was there, performing solitary acrobatics across the Elizabethan rafters.

The black-and-white tiles of the front hall were scattered with dead leaves, but the door was wide, and he crossed to it and went out, and the sweetness of the summer noon hit him like a perfumed wave, like a symphony of pollen and heat.

Sarah was sitting on the steps, in shorts and T-shirt.

He creaked down beside her.

“Look at them, George,” she said. “Just look at them.”

Jake and David lounged in striped deckchairs on the lawn. David was lying back, feet up, showered, dressed in fresh cream slacks, talking at length, waving an arm, explaining as if he could never stop. Jake perched on the end of the chair, in expensive sunglasses, listening. Or maybe not even listening, just looking.

Looking at his father.

Wharton said, “He looks content.”

That was an understatement, Sarah thought. Happiness was coming from Jake like a glow; it was there in the skin of his face, the angle of the dark lenses.

She said, “He's got just what he wants.”

“Indeed.” Wharton mused. In all the time he had known Jake, he had never seen the boy's restless energies so satisfied.

“And I'm glad. Don't get me wrong, George.”

He looked at her. “But?”

“But nothing's over.”

“Jake knows that.”

“I hope so.” She turned to him, anxious. “His father's home and safe, but mine, and my mother, is still in some filthy prison far in the future.” For a moment, that knowledge was a sickness inside her. “Janus rules there. Leah is still dead. The mirror is not destroyed.”

She stretched out her legs in the sun, her voice acid. “And I don't even have the Zeus coin anymore.”

“So Maskelyne really has it? “

“Oh yes. I climbed up and checked this morning. It's gone.”

“Then . . .”

“Do you think Maskelyne wants the mirror destroyed? Of course he doesn't. He's obsessed with the thing.” She shook her head. She saw again her father's arm trailing as they dragged him away. “I'm no nearer what I came for than I was in the winter. I've failed, George! Totally failed.”

“Don't you be so sure.” Wharton sipped thoughtfully from the mug. “A lot has changed. Venn has changed.”

“Enough to abandon his wife to save a future world he's never seen?” She shook her head. “I don't think so.”

Wharton was silent. Then he said, “Well then, maybe he should see it.”

She turned slowly. “What?”

“Maybe he should see it. The future. Your end time, Sarah. If you want to convince him.”

“That's not possible. Unless . . .”

“Jake says Moll has given him the way to journey into the future.” He drank the last dregs of the tea and put the mug down on the hot stone of the step. “So . . . It's just a thought.”

She looked at him.

“Cheers, George,” she said quietly.

“I think it's about time you trusted me,” Rebecca said.

Maskelyne had his back to her, in the old greenhouse with its broken panes. Piers's crop of tomato plants were tangled in wires on each side, their fruits small yet and still green.

“I do trust you.”

“Then tell me about your work with Janus.”

Maskelyne shrugged. “There isn't much to say, Becky. Except once I had no scar. Once I was a different man. But if you touch evil, if you think you can work with evil, it scars you. It's deadly. It explodes in your face. And believe me, Janus is a man without mercy. I've seen what he will do.”

“Will you give Sarah the broken coin?”

“No.” He came over then and took her hands and held them between his. “I will keep it safe. Neither she nor Janus will find it. I'll keep it safe until the time comes to use it.”

“And who decides that?”

For a moment she didn't want to hear his answer.

“I do,” he said.

“Like as if you're God or something.”

“Or something. But I won't hurt them, Becky. I promise you. I will make up for whatever I once did. The Zeus coin is more powerful than Sarah can even imagine. It could destroy us all, and I won't let that happen.”

Who are you?
she wanted to ask him. Who are you really?

But she was afraid of what the answer might be.

She pulled away, turned and walked out, and he came after her. Crossing the lawn, she looked up at the brilliance of the blue sky. “Venn won't be happy.”

Maskelyne gave his rare smile. “Venn never is.”

Venn carried the stepladder into the bedroom and propped it against the wall; quickly he climbed up and grasped the painting.

Between his hands, in his embrace, Leah laughed calmly out at him. He said to her, “I'm sorry. I've been stupid.”

She would really have laughed at that. She had a careless, shrugging way that he had loved.
“Whatever happens, Venn, the sun will rise tomorrow,”
she had always said about any problem. And yet for her, one day, it hadn't.

He lifted the portrait down; it was heavy, and the green scum of the Wood lay on it; he brushed that off, angry.

As he carried it out of the room, the corridor stretched before him; it became a road, and the road was not straight but veered on a sharp bend, and he was laughing and talking and driving too fast and the speed of the car exhilarated them both.

The wheel was warm and leathery under his hands. He jerked it aside.

And stopped and closed his eyes as the memory splintered, as the lorry loomed and the winshield shattered.

As the sky was below him.

As she screamed.

“Venn?”

Gideon's whisper was quiet.

Venn opened his eyes.

The changeling sat in the window seat, knees up. The silver suit was dissolving back to forest green, the boy's skin so pale he seemed like some wraith trapped in a haunted house.

Venn paused. He propped the painting against a bookcase.

“What are you doing?” Gideon said.

“Taking this downstairs. I'm going to place it right next to the mirror. So I can see it there, while we're working. Because now that David is back, we are going to work. Night and day, every hour, every minute, until we know how to get her back.”

Gideon smiled, his eyes glints of green. “Summer got to you, didn't she.”

“This time. But never again.”

“You and I both know that's an empty boast. That's why you're moving the painting. Because you're afraid you'll forget about Leah again.” Gideon knelt up on the sill. He unlatched the window and let it open.

Venn stared. “I thought you wanted to stay safe?”

The warm breeze blew Gideon's pale hair. He lifted his face to it, breathed it in deeply. Then he said, “I do. But I have to go back.”

Venn was silent.

“Summer will never leave you alone if I don't. She needs a mortal to torment, any mortal, but most of all, me. And in truth I'm sick of being trapped here. At least the Summerland is a bigger prison.” He turned. “But later . . . when you've done what you need to, promise me you'll let me try and go home.”

Venn gave a wintry smile. “You can try. But it will be hopeless.”

For a moment they were both still in the sun-dappled corridor. Dust motes slanted down the dark paneling. A bee buzzed in and bumped the glass.

Then Gideon murmured, “You hear them too, don't you.”

Venn did. Together they listened to the eerie, tormenting, distant music. Far and sweet and clear it drifted down the aisles of the Wood, a heartbreaking beauty, an enticing promise that would never be kept and always be broken. It infiltrated their hearts like a sickness.

Finally Gideon whispered “They don't get it, about the Shee, do they? Jake and the rest.”

“No.” Venn's gaze was distant and absorbed. “No. They don't get it.”

His fingers, against the gilded wood of the portrait frame, tapped the delicate rhythm.

Lunch was set out on the lawn, on a long table that Piers had dragged outside. Everyone came, even Gideon, though Sarah noticed how his eyes kept straying to watch the edges of the Wood, and how the butterflies that skittered over danced more playfully around him.