The Lightning Key (18 page)

There was an enormous crash of thunder as he spoke. The cloud lit up inside, giving a brief glimpse of a fabulous network of galleries and domes that opened out from one another like an endless hall of mirrors, and it seemed to Miles that every eye in the entire Realm was turned on him. He closed his eyes, which seemed to him a necessary part of disappearing. A hand gripped his shoulder and began to shake him. He pulled himself free and opened his eyes to see Nura leaning over him.

“It's all right,” she said. “You were having a bad dream.”

Miles nodded, struggling into a sitting postion. He looked across the room and saw to his relief that Little was sitting on the edge of her own bed, rubbing sleep from her eyes. “What time is it?” he asked.

“It's early,” said Nura, “but you must get up.” She opened the shutter on the arched window, letting
in the pearly dawn light. She turned to him and smiled. “I've spent the night thinking about yesterday's events,” she said, “and I've decided I will have to honor the Great Cortado's request and have you all beheaded.”

N
ura Mahnoosh Elham, night-wrapped and rose-fingered, ushered the Great Cortado and Doctor Tau-Tau into the courtyard and invited them to sit. A jug of iced water and a pot of mint tea sat on the mosaic table. She poured two cups of tea, spilling some on the tiles. “I'm sorry,” she said, “it's a little dark in here.” She crossed to the lamp that hung on the opposite wall and turned up the light. Doctor Tau-Tau raised his glass to his lips, but no sooner had he taken a mouthful than he gave a choking gasp and sprayed himself, the table and the Great Cortado with tea.

The turbaned Great Cortado leaped up with a
gasp of anger; then he stopped as he saw what had so startled his accomplice. Even Cortado himself seemed momentarily shaken, but he collected himself and forced a smile. In a corner of the room the severed heads of Miles, Little and Baltinglass of Araby sat carelessly on a carpet of sand, dark red stains blooming around each of them.

Doctor Tau-Tau's face changed like a traffic light from red to green. He stood up abruptly, sending his chair crashing to the floor, and stumbled wordlessly out of the courtyard, a pudgy hand clasped across his mouth.

“I'm sure he knows where the bathroom is by now,” said Nura coolly. She righted the wrought-iron chair and sat herself at the table. “You must forgive me for not fully trusting you yesterday,” she said. “Your visit was a little unexpected after all these years. However, when these bandits turned up I realized you were a man of your word, and I had them dealt with appropriately.” She poured herself a tea and took a sip. “I have given your proposal some thought, and have decided to go with you to find the grave of the Egg's maker. I don't think Doctor Tau-Tau will be able to effect your transformation on his own. He doesn't even know about your plan, does he?”

“He knows only what he needs to know,” said the Great Cortado.

“I will require full payment up front,” said Nura.

“I don't think so,” said the Great Cortado with an unconvincing smile. “I'll pay half your fee now, and the rest when the process is complete.”

Nura shrugged. “Very well,” she said. “We will leave at sunset and travel in the cooler hours. In the meantime I would caution against using the Tiger's Egg unless absolutely necessary. The transformation you want to achieve is an ambitious one, and if the power of the Egg is depleted from overuse your chances of success will be far slimmer.”

She stood up. “Now I have much to do. We will meet at sunset by the well at the bottom of the steps. You may collect your squeamish associate on your way out.”

The Great Cortado paused in the archway and took a last look at the severed heads. “One other thing,” he said. “I would like the boy's head boxed to bring with me.”

Nura raised her eyebrows. “It won't smell that sweet after a few days in your saddlebag,” she said.

“Tau-Tau doesn't smell too good either, but he has his uses,” said Cortado with a strained giggle. “You
can pack it in ice, can't you?”

“It will cost you extra,” said Nura.

The Great Cortado sniggered. “It will be worth every sou,” he said, and he went in search of the distressed fortune-teller.

Now, picture if you will the grim scene in that leafy courtyard. Beneath the well-tended plants sit three human heads on a bed of sand. The heads belong to people we know well—a grizzled old man who has crossed every continent and whose fire has been rekindled by the spark of his young companions, a small girl who has learned that love is the heart of friendship and loyalty only its skin, and a boy full of courage and hope whose dream of weaving a family from the scattered threads he has inherited seems so close to completion. There they sit, their eyes closed and their lips sand-coated, as the echo of a door slamming far below them seems to put a final end to their story.

It will probably not surprise you to find that it is no such thing. One of the boy's eyes opens a fraction, and he attempts to spit out a mouthful of sand, which merely dribbles down his chin. Little laughs. “Even I can spit better than that, Miles,” she says. The three heads squirm and wriggle in a manner that's quite unsettling to look at, and that only makes
them more uncomfortable than they already are.

“If this is being dead,” grumbled Baltinglass of Araby, “I'd rather go back to being a living fossil.”

“Patience.” Nura laughed as she swept back into the room. “It will take a little time to extract you from there.”

It did indeed take some time, as the trapdoor through which their heads poked had to be carefully dismantled again before they could be released. They were stiff and cramped from crouching on the stone staircase that led down from the trapdoor into the storeroom below. Miles, who had toured with the Circus Bolsillo as a magician's assistant, was more accustomed than the others to being confined in awkward spaces. It was he who had spotted the trapdoor in the corner of the room and had given shape to that part of Nura's plan. They had cut three circular holes in the trapdoor and separated the wooden boards so that they could be assembled around their necks once they were in position. He knew that it would be no easy task to fool the Great Cortado with a circus trick, but as the rest of the floor was tiled in stone he reasoned that hiding the trapdoor with sand would make it look all the more convincing, and it seemed he had been right. A liberal sprinkling of berry juice had been enough to
complete the illusion.

“There's a small snag,” said Baltinglass of Araby, knocking his pipe on the table to dislodge sand that had found its way into it. “As things stand we'll have to make the return journey without the boy's head, which has proved fairly useful in the past.”

“Can't we just give Cortado a box of ice and nail it shut?” said Little.

“We'd have to put a rock in or something,” said Miles. “Once the ice has melted and the water has run out the box will be too light. If he gets suspicious and tries to open it, it will be a disaster.”

“You're right,” said Nura. “But we can do better than that. I'll have a sheep's head packed instead. When the ice runs out it will begin to smell, as I warned him. It will quickly become unbearable and I will persuade him to throw it away unopened. No ship will take him on board with it anyhow.”

Miles nodded his agreement. It was a little unsettling to be discussing the fate of what might easily have been his own head, but on the other hand he was pleased to discover that his aunt seemed to see the world from a perspective that was familiar to him. He thought of the plans he could have made with his mother had she lived, and the fun they could have had together; then he reluctantly put
the thought out of his head.

They spent the morning preparing for the return journey of Miles, Little and Baltinglass, who would make a head start in order to get to Al Bab as quickly as possible. The air was unusually humid, and thunderclouds rumbled over the distant mountains. Miles helped Nura pack the saddlebags with fresh provisions and clean clothing, and they buckled them onto the camels in silence while a couple of the local children kept watch for any sign of Tau-Tau and Cortado. When they were finished Nura smiled at Miles and said, “You should say good-bye to your grandmother.”

“I think I got off on the wrong foot with her,” said Miles as they climbed the stone stairs into the coolness of the house. “And I don't think she was all that pleased to see me in the first place.”

“It would be a mistake to believe that,” said Nura. “My mother hardened herself when Celeste died, but inside her heart beats the same as before.” They reached the old lady's door and Nura knocked softly. Miles's grandmother sat in her accustomed place, propped up on her pillows with her hands crossed in her lap.

“Miles will be leaving soon,” said Nura, and she pushed him gently inside.

The old lady patted the edge of the bed without a word, and Miles sat down.

“I am a little too old for surprises,” said his grandmother, “and on the rare occasions I meet one I usually just want it to disappear. You are obviously a boy of great courage and determination and I should not have dismissed you as I did.”

Miles shifted uncomfortably. “That's all right,” he said.

“You plan to try to release your father from this stone,” said his grandmother, “and to restore him to himself?”

Miles nodded. “Do you think it can be done?” he said.

“If it were anyone else asking I would say absolutely not. In your case, Miles, I think it is unlikely, but not impossible.”

“Because I'm his son?”

“Because you are Celeste's son,” said the old lady. “I never met your father. By all accounts he was a kind man and good with animals, but those talents would be of no use in what you are trying to do. It is the gifts that you inherited from your mother that turn the odds just slightly in your favor. Nura tells me you have both the far eyes and the bright hands.” She looked at Miles with her piercing eyes. “Do you
know how unusual that is?”

“I'm not sure if I really have,” said Miles. He could not remember discussing anything of the kind with Nura.

“You can see things that have not yet happened?” said the old lady. Miles nodded. “And you have healed injuries that looked beyond curing?”

“I suppose so,” said Miles.

The old lady clucked disapprovingly. “‘I think,' ‘I suppose,'” she said. “I never heard of anyone besides Celeste who possessed both gifts. You've grown up without anyone to teach you how to use them, though you are not to blame for that.”

She leaned forward and grabbed Miles's chin as she had when examining his teeth the night before, but this time she looked into his eyes. “You have much to learn,” she said, “and a short time to do it in. To restore your father you will need the far eyes to see all parts of the puzzle at once, and the bright hands to steal the energy to do what's necessary. The Tiger's Egg is just a tool to help you focus your powers. You have learned the key?”

Miles nodded. “I don't know what it means, though,” he said.

“You might never know until the moment comes to use it,” said his grandmother. She sat back against
the pillow. “In this case the tiger's power is entangled twice over. It is tied up with the soul of the very person you wish to save, and it is also bound by the promise your mother made. You will have to keep her promise to the Fir Bolg.”

Miles looked at her in surprise. “Yesterday you advised me to ignore it,” he said.

“Yesterday I told you to throw the stone in the sea. If you did that you'd have no reason to keep the promise. You did not make it yourself, after all.” She sat back and crossed her hands in her lap. “But you cannot undo the Tiger's Egg without discharging any promise that binds it.”

Miles looked at his grandmother as he tried to take in everything she had told him. His strange abilities to ease pain and to predict what was about to happen had seemed up to now to be random accidents that were largely outside his control. Now that he had the Tiger's Egg back and was about to set off for Partridge Manor he realized he could no longer afford to view them in this way.

“Can I ask you something?” he said to his grandmother.

“What is it?” she said.

“If I do manage to restore my father, what will happen to the tiger?”

His grandmother smiled sadly. “The tiger has had a long life,” she said. “Longer than most.”

Miles was surprised to see tears glistening in her red-rimmed eyes, and it made him embarrassed at the question he had asked. He waited to see if there was more to her answer, but the old lady just sighed. “Always the tigers,” she said, shaking her head. “You are just like your mother.”