The Midnight Carnival (13 page)

How do I get out
? she thought.
Ms Lemon didn’t say
.

A bit of panic set in now, until a dark shape moved in front. It was big, and it was alive.

Jump
, she thought and, within a few seconds she had repeated the mind-hopping spell and was moving through the woods at a swift pace.

She was low down, running on four legs. Her sense of smell was still excellent but, suddenly, she could see very well. She could hear well too. No scurrying feet or chewing teeth in the undergrowth escaped her notice. She caught a fleeting glance of a paw below her. From the size, she realised she had to be piggybacking on the mind of a fox.

It was exciting. It moved so quickly. It was stealthy and many animals around it had no idea it was there. She heard
a twig snap in the distance and the fox made for it. There was something coming, something big, a person, so loud and cumbersome that the fox made only the barest attempt at hiding.

It was a girl. Grace could see dark, curly hair. She had been stomping ahead, then she slowed and turned. Standing for a few moments, she walked forward again, quieter this time.

It was Adie.

She had told Una her grandmother wasn’t well. It was a feeble excuse. Her grandmother lived in Carrick and, if she had really been poorly, enough for Adie’s parents to drive her all the way over there, Grace’s mother would have heard about it. Adie’s granny was clearly fine.

And Adie was in the woods.

Grace willed the fox in the direction her friend had come from, forgetting she had no control.

Fudge! Please go that way, Mr Fox. Please
.

Luckily, the fox smelled something delicious coming from a campfire up ahead. It crept forward. And that’s when Grace got her second surprise. Bob the Mirrorman sat by the fire. There was a fish on a spit, and the man was scooping spoonfuls of the meat into a bowl.

He looked up. Grace felt exposed, even though there was no way he could see her.

‘Away with you,’ the man said.

But the smell of the food was too good and the fox stayed
where he was.

‘Away with you, I said.’ Then Bob leaned forward. He stared at the fox as if he knew there was something strange about it.

Peeling a piece of flesh from the fish, he threw it near the fire. The fox hesitated, suspicious. Bob threw another piece, about a metre further out, and the fox took a few steps. It watched him, its ears and eyes alert. Then darting in, it grabbed the piece nearest and ran back.

No
, Grace thought.
Stay where you are
.

But the fox felt safer now. Slowly this time, it moved in to gobble up the piece of fish by the fire.

Bob extended one arm, his expression curious, and with a flick of his fingers Grace felt like she’d been smacked in the forehead, hard. She tumbled off the fox’s mind, hurtling backwards, not able to make out the trees around her. She landed back in herself with a thud – and the feeling that she might throw up any minute.

‘You’re back!’ Una cried.

Grace blinked, her vision clearing, still feeling sick.

‘You were stuck like this,’ Una imitated a zombie with its mouth hanging open, ‘for ages. Where did you go?’

‘Caterpillar,’ Grace groaned. ‘Then fox.’

‘You mind-hopped from one animal to another?’ Ms Lemon sounded halfway between concerned and impressed. ‘That was a little more advanced than I had intended for this
class, Grace.’

‘It tickled,’ Grace mumbled in explanation, as saliva filled her mouth and she begged herself not to vomit.

‘I mind-hopped a bird,’ Rachel said, a little too loud for Grace’s delicate state. ‘It was brilliant!’

‘I was in a beetle for a little bit,’ said Una. ‘Then I fell out.’

‘Adie,’ Grace whispered.

‘She’s not here, remember? Her granny’s sick.’ Una turned to Ms Lemon. ‘Did the mind-hopping break Grace, Miss? She’s all skewy.’

‘She’ll be fine, Una.’

Ms Lemon smiled at Grace, like everything was back to normal. Grace wanted to indicate that it was not, but the queasy feeling in her stomach would only let her walk slowly from the woods, slightly bent over, and groaning in discomfort.

12

Girls in Glass Houses…

Tink.

Tink, tink.

Adie fired pebbles at Delilah’s bedroom window. She was more than nervous standing in Mrs Quinlan’s back garden, knowing one of those dreadful cats could announce her presence at any moment. There was one weaving through weeds on the far side, eyeing her suspiciously.

Finally, Delilah’s small frame appeared at the window. She gave Adie a confused wave and disappeared. A minute later she was at the back door.

‘Adie, what’s going on? Are you alright?’

Adie nodded at first, then shook her head.

‘I need help.’

Adie admired Delilah’s brazenness. The girl, having dressed and collected B-brr from her room, deftly crept outside and shut the back door without even a hint of concern. Adie had been so terrified sneaking out of her own house at night that she had turned back twice.

‘Are you sure Mrs Quinlan won’t notice you’re gone?’ she asked.

‘She sleeps like a log. It’s fine.’

Delilah had been the perfect person to tell, Adie realised. She didn’t balk when told about the water-messaging and Adie’s attempt to make contact with her friends on Hy-Breasal, in fact, she had nodded as if it had been a perfectly reasonable thing to do. But she had seemed confused by the creature that followed the message back.

‘What do you mean, it came back with you? How?’

‘I don’t know, it just did. I sensed something the second I got out of the water and then the faery thing appeared.’

‘Nothing corporeal could travel on a water-message. It’s spiritual. It’s only your mind that moves.’

‘I know that,’ Adie said, thinking she should have asked Delilah about messaging when it first occurred to her. Sometimes she forgot how much the small girl knew. ‘But it must have done. Somehow.’

‘Can’t be corporeal then.’

‘Bob said it’s not a faery anyway. He tried to trap it in this leaf tornado thing, and it escaped.’

‘Slipped through it, you mean?’

‘No, it burst out. Sent the leaves flying everywhere, like they were missiles. It really stung when they hit.’

‘It has power then.’

‘Yes, but… it’s almost like our stuff is nothing to it. It brushes off our magic, like it’s immune or something. And…’

‘What?’ Delilah pushed as they walked past the school, approaching the woods.

‘It’s like a little kid too, let out for the first time. When Bob and I found it, it was dancing around in the trees. And both times we trapped it, it looked at us as if we were playing games.’ Adie hesitated before they entered the shadow of the trees. ‘Like hide-and-seek or something.’

Delilah was quiet for a while and, as they approached the river on the right edge of the woods, she pulled something from her pocket. It was a bronze-coloured stone, with a shallow curve like a small bowl. It was smooth and polished to a high shine.

‘What’s that?’ said Adie.

‘I found it in a chest my mother left behind after… after she left. It’s called a magnesia stone. It has to be carved under a waning moon, and then infused with sesame oil – not sure how they do that – and then you can use it to discover
secrets. At least, I know you can use it to see a creature’s true self. Sort of.’

‘We could have used one of those when your mother… well…’ Adie broke off and looked apologetic.

‘Yeah, maybe. It’s not very subtle, is the only thing. Was it near here that you found the creature before?’

‘Yes,’ Adie replied. ‘Bob tracked it using a bag of his spit and other ingredients. Haven’t a clue what was in it, sorry. Wait, something called dieback! That was one of them. Can’t remember the rest, though.’

‘Doesn’t matter,’ Delilah said, tapping her shoulder. B-brr emerged from beneath her collar, yawning and smacking his lips. ‘We’ve got a mini-bloodhound.’

The girl gave the little wood nymph a few minutes to stretch himself out, swing from her hair a few times, before he somersaulted back onto her shoulder, ready and waiting.

‘It’s not one like you,’ Delilah said to him gently, ‘but it doesn’t belong here. Can you sniff it out?’

B-brr didn’t react at first. Adie wondered if he understood English. Delilah talked to him often and, though he seemed to understand eventually, Adie suspected it wasn’t the actual words that he followed.

Gazing out into the woods, the nymph finally sniffed. Then sniffed again. He climbed to the top of Delilah’s head, grabbed handfuls of her hair like they were reins, and stuck his nose in the air.

‘Ow!’ Delilah scratched at her head where the hair was pulled. ‘This way.’

The wood nymph was every bit the bloodhound Delilah declared him to be. Far quicker than Bob had done, he led them to a spot near one edge of the woods where, in a shallow dip in the ground, the creature sat pulling at twigs and strands of vegetation and examining them, as if they were fascinating puzzles. The girls ducked down, out of sight.

‘You ready?’ Delilah whispered.

‘Ready,’ Adie replied.

‘Okay. Then be prepared to run.’

Adie didn’t know what she had expected, but she was startled when Delilah leapt to her feet and fired the stone at the creature’s head. It struck it with some force, and the huge, round eyes widened. The magnesia stone flew back to Delilah’s hand, like a boomerang, and the woods erupted in noise and fury.

‘Run!’ shouted Delilah.

A massive wave of nothing, like the aftermath of an atomic bomb, ploughed into the girls as they ran, sending them flying and spinning through the air, bouncing along the woodland floor, rolling beyond the trees to the riverbank. Adie’s head was ringing when she felt Delilah grasp her hand and pull her down the bank where they couldn’t be seen.

‘Stay down.’ The small girl was breathless, clutching the stone between thumb and forefinger.

‘You weren’t kidding.’ Adie was gasping for breath. ‘That was not subtle, Delilah.’

‘Nope.’

But Delilah didn’t seem bothered. She watched the stone as wisps of colour curled from the shallow bowl.

‘That faery thing? That’s not its true form.’

‘Okay,’ Adie replied, ‘so what is its true form?’

‘I can’t tell,’ Delilah watched the moving wisps, perplexed.

‘It’s complicated. See all these strands? There shouldn’t be so many. And they’re all intertwining, they shouldn’t be doing that either. A person should have just one. Or at least one main one, maybe a few others if they depend on other living creatures in some way…’ She turned the stone, looking at it from all directions. ‘It’s looks like it’s
made up
of many other lives, or dependents, or… I don’t know. And this clear line keeping them all tied together? I’m not sure what that could be.’

‘Has is got some cosmic Multiple Personality Disorder?’

Delilah gave her a look, and Adie shrugged.

‘You’re the one describing it!’ She lowered her voice, remembering they were hiding. ‘I didn’t know you were going to whack that creature in the head. No wonder it got mad. What if you’ve given it brain damage or something?’

‘It doesn’t have a brain. Not a brain in the way we think of it, anyway. Besides, the stone’s lighter than it looks.’

She bounced the magnesia off her hand and Adie caught
it. It was much lighter than she expected.

‘I take it we’re not catching this thing tonight?’

‘No, we’re not,’ said Delilah. ‘Bob was right. We can’t catch it until we know what it is. I’ll have to do some reading.’

‘Read quickly, please,’ said Adie. ‘I don’t want anyone else to find out.’

Delilah gave her a comforting look.

‘I know you don’t.’

Justine’s pointed feet dangled ten metres off the ground. She hung with her waist wrapped in thick, white rope and her hands reached for the tarpaulin ceiling. Arching back into a mid-air crab, she spied the girls waiting for her in the bleachers.

‘Well, hey there,’ she said, flipping herself right side up and rolling out of the wrap.

Her right hand was all that kept her fixed to the rope until she wound one leg around it and slid gracefully to the ground.

‘One of the stall operators told us you’d be here,’ said Grace. ‘Are you working on a new routine? It looks great.’

‘Thank you. Yeah, it’s new.’ The ballerina took a seat in between Rachel and Una, and stroked her beard softly. ‘I’m glad you came around. I was worried about what happened the other day outside Agata’s trailer. I came across a little
strange, I know. You can just ignore all of that, it didn’t mean nothing.’

‘It did,’ replied Una. ‘’Cos when we ransacked Agata’s trailer later on, that weird doctor appeared out of nowhere and creeped us all out.’

Grace stared at Una open-mouthed. After much discussion, they had agreed that they would tell Justine about the incident, but very carefully.

‘You did what?’ The ballerina’s eyes were wide with shock.

Taking a deep breath, Grace told her exactly what had happened, leaving out their own little secret at the end, though Una seemed keen to spill that one as well.

‘It was like he looked right into our souls,’ the girl said theatrically. ‘Because he
knew
things. He knew things about us.’

‘Knew what?’ asked Justine.

‘Things. He knew
who we were.
’

Grace gave Una a dig in the ribs that was too obvious to be ignored by Justine.

‘That’s okay,’ she said. ‘You got your own stuff, I get it. We all need secrets.’

Grace smiled gratefully.

‘Why don’t we forget about serious stuff for a while?’ said Justine. ‘Let’s go have some fun.’

‘Could we have a go on the rope?’ asked Rachel.

‘Sure, I can show you a few things. And if you wanna be all
proper, it’s a
corde lisse
.’ Justine winked. ‘Fancy word for rope.’

It wasn’t like regular rope – all rough and scratchy – it was made of strands of cotton, and much softer. First, Justine showed them how to stand up on the rope by wrapping one leg around and flexing the foot, using it as a platform to step onto. They all got that bit fairly quickly. Then she showed them how to climb, and that was much harder. Grace stood on her foot, then released her legs, bending her knees, and tried to repeat the stand a little further up the rope. But the
corde lisse
wouldn’t behave. It swung away from her feet, leaving her dangling and kicking to get it back around her leg.

‘You’ll get it,’ Justine laughed. ‘Keep trying.’

Of course, Rachel, who was graceful to the point of annoying, picked it up quicker than the other two. Her toes pointed, her legs never flailed, and she got halfway up the rope before Grace and Una could manage a single climbing step.

‘Aw, Rach,’ Una moaned. ‘How are you doing that? You’re like a big, elegant… thing in the air.’

‘Thanks, Una, but it’s not so hard once you get the hang of it.’

‘Yeah,’ Grace muttered, ‘for you.’

While Una had another go, Justine unhooked a large hoop from the wall. It hung on a vertical rope on the opposite side of the tent from the
corde lisse
, and was just within reach of someone standing on tiptoes on the floor.

‘This hoop bruises a bit,’ she warned.